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by Sam Moskowifz

TWO GREAT
STORIES !

THE STAR FISHERMAN by Robert F. Young

Come with Chris Stark, a star fisherman, to the farthest ends
of space and cast your net in the deeps of the Trans-Solar
Sea. Maybe like him, you'll catch death in your nets— and
a love that will haunt you to the end of time!

SHIELD by Poul Anderson

He came back from the stars a hero. But a. few short hours
later he was a hunted fugitive— a man with a secret the
whole world wanted. And only a beautiful, disillusioned
woman offered any hope of salvation!

There's exciting reading in June FANTASTIC— on sale May 22

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AMAZING STORIES, Fact and Science Fiction, Vol. 36, No. 6, June, 1962, is published
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Vol. 36, No. 6

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"FIRST IN SCIENCE FICTION SINCE 1926"

NOVELETS

THUNDER IN SPACE

By Lester del Rey 8

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES
(A Classic Reprint)

By W. K. Sonnemann 98

SHORT STORIES
THE WARRIORS

By Tom Purdom 40

PASSPORT TO ETERNITY

By J. G. Ballard 56

SF PROFILE

THE SAINTLY HERESY OF
CLIFFORD D. SIMAK

By Sam Moskowitz 86

FACT

EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL LIFE:

AN ASTRONOMER'S THEORY

By Ben Bova 75

FEATURES

EDITORIAL . 6

THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH
BENEDICT BREADFRUIT: IV

By Grandall Barretton 55

THE SPECTROSCOPE 137

. . . OR SO YOU SAY 141

COMING NEXT MONTH 144

Cover: ALEX SCHOMBURG

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V P

EDITORIAL.

■»

TY/E begin this month a short series of science-fact articles by
' ’ Ben Bova which will discuss both the factual and the fanciful
aspects of the possibilities of extra-terrestrial life. We are particu-
larly pleased to be able to present this series, for although “life on
other worlds” has been a rather oft-touched-upon subject recently,
we feel that Bova’s series approaches the topic from new angles and
aspects. (For an introduction to these aspects, see page 75).

For those of you who are used to seeing Mr. Boya’s name as a

byline on scienc e-fiction, we thought it
might be interesting to give you some
background about the man, as opposed
to the author. Bova (1), was born in
Philadelphia Nov. 8, 1932 (if you have
misplaced your slide-rule, that makes
him not quite 30 years old), and is mar-
ried to — as he puts it — “an Italian dish
named Rosa.” They have two side dishes
— Michael, almost 4, and Regina, almost
2 .

He got a degree 'in journalism from
Temple University in Philadelphia, and
did graduate work at Georgetown U.’s School of Foreign Service.
After some newspaper and magazine work, Ben became technical edi-
tor for Project Vanguard with the Martin Co. Later he wrote audio-
visual scripts for high-school physics courses, and then directed a
technical publishing company. Currently he is with Avco-Everett
Research Laboratories as a technical communications executive.

His personal interests center on astronomy and anthropology. An
ardent amateur astronomer, Bova is a member of the American Rock-

( Continued on page 7k)

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...THE WONDERS OF SATELLITES,
ROCKETS-THE MEN BEHIND THEM...

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is meant for you.

Here, in a magazine edited by two great names in
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Space World brings this all to you every month . . .
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The men on the space station had a word for trouble

— " thunder Always it had been thunder on earth.

Now, with the warheads decaying and the Soviets
playing a mysterious game, now there was . . .

THUNDER in SPACE

By LESTER del REY

I N the little formal garden in
Geneva, the guards had with-
drawn discreetly, out of sight
and hearing of the two men who
sat on a carved marble bench in

the center- of the enclosure.

The President of the United
States was too old for the days
of strained public and private
meetings and the constant bad-
gering of his advisers that had
preceded this final, seemingly

Mmm

iRlIlljP

& mammim

-' f ■ v 1

".V2-

foredoomed effort. His hands
trembled as he lifted them to
light a cigarette. Only his voice
still held its accustomed calm.

“Then it’s stalemate, Feodor
Stepanovich. I can make no more
concessions without risking im-
peachment.”

The dark, massive head of the
Russian Premier nodded. “Nor
can I, without committing politi-
cal suicide.” His English was
better than the rural dialect of
Russian he still retained. “Call it
a double checkmate. Our pre-
decessors sowed their seeds too
deep for our spades. Or should I
say, too high?”

Both heads turned to the north,
where a bright spot was climbing
above the horizon. The space sta-
tion sparkled in sunlight far
above Earth, sliding with Olym-
pian deliberation past a few vis-
ible stars until it was directly
overhead. Without a timetable or
a telescope, there was no way of
knowing whether it was the Rus-
sian Tsiolkovsky or the Ameri-
can Goddard, nor did either man
care. Half the world lived in al-
most hysterical fear of one or the
other, with the rest of the human
race existing in terror of both.

The Premier muttered some-
thing from the ugliness of his
childhood experiences, but the
President only sighed unhappily,
as if sorry that his own back-
ground gave him no such ex-
pressions.

A few minutes later, the lead-
ers separated. As they moved
across the garden, their escorts
surrounded them, clearing the
way toward the cars that would
take them to the airport. Behind
them, professional diplomats
stopped puzzling over the delay
and began spinning obfuscations
to cynical reporters. The phrases
had long since lost all meaning,
but the traditions of propaganda
had to be maintained.

In the UN, the Israeli delegate
crumpled a news dispatch and
began speaking without notes,
demanding that space be inter-
nationalized. It was the greatest
speech of his career, and even the
delegate fi-om Egypt applauded.
But national survival could not
be trusted to the shaky impar-
tiality of the UN. The resolution
was vetoed by both the United
States and Russia.

The Fourteenth Space Disarm-
ament Conference was ended.

A MONTH later, a thousand
miles above Earth and ex-
actly 180° behind the Tsiolkov-
sky, the Goddard swung steadily
around the globe in a two-hour
circumpolar orbit. Outwardly, it
looked like the great metal
doughnut that space artists had
pictured for decades. On the in-
side, however, the evidence of
hasty, crash-planned work was

AMAZING STORIES

everywhere. The air fans whined
and vibrated, the halls creaked
and groaned, and the water need-
ed to maintain balance gurgled
and banged through ill-conceived
piping. It was cramped and to-
tally inadequate for the needs of
the nation that had put it into
space eight years before in a
rush attempt to match the Rus-
sian “Sulky”.

Jerry Blane should have been
used to such conditions. He’d
been one of the original space-
struck men who’d helped to build
it and then had been lucky
enough to get a permanent as-
signment. Now he drifted in the
weightless hub. watching the
loading of a ship bound back for
the home planet, wondering what
hell’s brew the boxes contained.
The pi-oject that had usurped the
cryogenic labs had involved its
own crew of scientists, who were
already on board the ship, taking
their secret with them.

He shrugged, trying to dismiss
the problem. The motion twitched
him about, and he corrected au-
tomatically. His tall, thin body
was accustomed to weightless-
ness.

Beside him, the head of the
science corps on the station also
floated in midair. The big body
of Dr. Austin Peal was revealed
in the single pair of shorts cus-
tomary on the Goddard, and its
darkness contrasted sharply with
the blond hair and pale skin of

Blane. Only the frowns matched.

The short, intense figure of
General Devlin popped into the
hub from the tube elevator ahead
of the pilot, Edwards. In spite of
the weightlessness, the station
commandant managed to pull
himself to rigid attention at sight
of Blane. He scowled, but held
out his hand with formal cor-
rectness.

“All right, Blane. You’re in
charge officially until I get back,”
he admitted grudgingly. He ob-
viously resented the order that
left a civilian in charge while he
went down to testify for the sta-
tion appropriations and receive
new orders. “You’ll find detailed
notes on my desk. I suggest you
follow them to the letter.”

He grabbed a handhold and be-
gan pulling himself into the air-
lock to the ship without waiting
for a reply.

Edwards had lingered. Now he
also held out his hand. “Wish me
luck, Jerry,” he said. “I may
need it.”

B ECAUSE of the contents of
the boxes and the presence of
Devlin, Edwards had been or-
dered to make his landing at
Canaveral, under military secur-
ity. Most space work was done
from Johnston Island in the Pa-
cific; the inadequate facilities at
the Cape were supposed to be
used only by smaller rockets. But
lately the rules were shot in a lot

THUNDER IN SPACE

of ways. Ever since the last meet-
ing at Geneva, nothing seemed
normal.

“You’ll make out,” Drake told
him. “Our predictions give you
perfect landing weather, at
least.”

“Yeah. Clear weather and
thunder below.” In the station
slang, thunder stood for heavy
trouble. The weather forecast
didn’t matter; there was always
thunder below.

Edwards moved through the
airlock and into his ship. A mo-
ment later, fire bloomed from the
rocket tubes and the ship began
moving away. In the station,
motors began whining, restoring
the hub’s spin to match that of
the rest of the Goddard.

From the viewing ports, Earth
filled almost the entire field of
vision, like a giant opal set in
black velvet. More than half was
covered by bright cloud masses,
but the rest showed swirls and
patterns of blue water, green
forest and reddish brown barren
patches. Over everything lay the
almost fluorescent blue of atmos-
phere, forming a brilliant violet
halo at the horizon. It looked in-
credibly beautiful. So, Blane
thought, does a Portuguese man-
of-war — until one sees the slime
underneath or touches the poi-
soned stings.

“Why can’t they leave us
alone?” Peal asked, as if reading
Blane’s mind. “Why can’t they

blow themselves up quietly with-
out ruining our chances here?”

Blane chuckled bitterly. He’d
been on vacation down there a
month before, and Earth was
fresher in his memory than it
was to Peal. “They don’t see it
that way. To them, we’re the
danger, the biggest sword of Da-
mocles ever invented. They look
up and see us going overhead,
loaded with enough megaton
bombs to blast life off Earth.
Every time we orbit over them,
they see Armageddon right over
their heads, waiting some fool’s
itching finger. They could risk
the holocaust when everything
was halfway around the world,
but not when it’s where they can
look up and see it. Most of the
thunder down there is caused by
the chained lightning we’re car-
rying up here.”

It wasn’t an original idea. The
panic on Earth had been in-
creasing since the building of the
Russian station. Now panic bred
false moves, and errors bred
more panic; Sooner or later, that
panic could get out of hand and
bring about the very ruin they
feared.

“Besides,” he added, “there’s
the expense of keeping us up
here. They think the billions
needed to maintain us are pau-
perizing them.”

“We’re paying three to one on
every cent we get! Even forget-
ting the work in astronomy, bio-

AMAZING STORIES

chemistry, cryogenics and high-
vacuum research, our weather
predictions are worth billions a
year in crop returns.”

Blane shrugged. “Most of our
work is for the government with-
out payment, so Congress still
has to appropriate billions for us
yearly. That’s all the people see.
We’re poison down there. They’d
vote to ditch us if they weren’t
so scared of the bombs on the
Sulky.”

“That’s what comes of putting
scientific tools under government
control,” Peal grumbled. “The
stations should have been private
enterprises from the beginning.”

B LANE nodded automatically.

It was an old argument, and
it made sense. But there was no
chance of the government ever
letting go now. They took the
clanking elevator down toward
the rim, while weight built up to
the normal one-third Earth grav-
ity that was produced by the spin
at the outer edge of the Goddard.
Then they moved along the hall-
way that circled the rim, through
the recreation hall, past the vacu-
um labs that were busy with some
kind of military development,
and past the cryogenic section,
where men were busy getting
ready to resume normal work. Be-
yond that lay the weather study
section. It should have been lo-
cated in the hub, but there had
been too little room, and the

pickups were remotely controlled,
flashing their pictui’es of Earth
onto big screens hei’e. Now the
screens showed Madagascar to
the west of them as they swung
northward. Men were busy plot-
ting the final details for next
month’s weather predictions.

Peal followed Blane through
the side door into the little office
of Devlin. The General was some-
thing of a martinet, but his dis-
cipline extended to himself. Ev-
erything was in order, and the
list of instructions lay in a folder
in the center of the desk. Blane
glanced at it, then at the basket
of communications from Earth.
He grimaced, and passed some of
the flimsies over to Peal. “There’s
more evidence, if you want to
pi’ove the profit we could show.”

Thei'e were requests for proj-
ects to be done here, complaints —
often angry — at projects al-
ready okayed but delayed by
high-priority military research.
There were applications from
names already famous below.
Five foundations were demand-
ing that the lunar ships be
rushed to completion.

The intercom came to life with
a rasping parody of the voice of
Devlin’s secretary. “Mr. Blane,
Captain Manners insists on see-
ing you. He’s been waiting
nearly an hour.”

Blane flipped through Devlin’s
instructions. There was an entry
on Manners thei’e: Troublemak-

THUNDER IN SPACE

er, possibly paranoid. Add his
figures to HQ report as routine
only.

“Send him in,” Blane ordered.
The red-headed young captain
had been assigned here only six
months ago, but Blane had met
him often enough to like him.

Almost at once, the connecting
office door opened and Manners
shoved in. He was obviously
angry, but his voice didn’t show
it. “Thanks for seeing me, Blane.
I’d just about decided you would-
n’t.” He slapped a piece of film
down on the desk. “Here. Look at
that!”

The film was slightly dark-
ened. Blane turned it over, recog-
nizing it as one of the strips
worn by the men who worked in
the bomb section to warn of any
accidental exposure to radiation.
But it was well under any dan-
gerous level of exposure. He
passed it to Peal, who studied it
in curiosity.

“That’s in five hours of rou-
tine work in the bomb bay,”
Manners said. “Koutine work!
And I checked the films before
issuing them, so I know they
weren’t pre-exposed.” He pulled
out a sheet of paper covered with
figures and dropped it on the
desk. “The radiation’s up in there
again. Check it yourself if you
won’t accept my readings.”

Peal had grabbed up the fig-
ures which listed the radiation
count in various sections of the

bomb bay. They meant nothing
to Blane, but the scientist
tensed visibly as he studied
them.

“I gather you showed your
figures to Devlin,” Blane said.
“What did he say about them?”

Bitterness washed over Man-
ner’s face. “He told me to forget
it, that readings were higher here
than what I’d learned handling
warheads below because we got
so many cosmic rays. Three
months ago, they were a lot high-
er, and he said there was an in-
crease in cosmic radiation. But
he okayed my getting the air
pumped out of the bay so nothing
hot would be sucked into the rest
of the station. Last month, the
figures went up to about half
what they are now, and he mum-
bled something about a cosmic
ray storm. I haven’t been able to
see him since then.”

“There’s no such thing as a
cosmic ray storm,” Peal said flat-
ly. “Why wasn’t this reported to
me? It's partly in my province.”

“General Devlin ordered me
not to discuss it with anyone!”

“Thunder?” Blane asked the
scientist.

“If it keeps doubling every
month, it’s disaster! The thin
walls here are no protection from
radiation. Even now, we’d better
evacuate the bio labs beside the
bay. Captain Manners, we’ll have
to check you on this. I’m not ex-
actly doubting your word, but

AMAZING STORIES

these results are impossible ac-
cording to anything I know.” He
swung to Blane. “I think you’d
better come, too, Jerry. This may
be something for the authori-
ties, and you carry the weight
here now.”

TT was a lousy beginning to his

temporary command, Blane.
thought. But seeing Peal’s face,
he simply nodded and followed
the other two out into the hall.
They were heading toward the
bomb section when a shout went
up from some of the men watch-
ing the viewing screens.

Blane swore to himself, but
turned back.

He saw at once that the screens
were set for top magnification,
showing a section of Earth at the
extreme limits of resolution. A
glance at the projected coordi-
nates showed that they were over
southern Russia. His eyes were
untrained at grasping details,
but he saw enough to recognize
that they must be viewing the
great Russian rocket base that
supplied the Sulky.

Scarfield had taken over from
his subordinate and began pick-
ing out details with a moving
spot of light. “Rocket— see its
shadow ? And there— there —
there. Jerry, they’ve got every
ship they own assembled togeth-
er. And it looks as if they’ve been
running supplies to them all.
Something big’s due.”

“Attack?” Blane asked. One of
the jobs of the station was to spot
any clustering of military rock-
ets that might presage a ground-
based attack.

Scarfield shook his head. “Not
a chance. Those are space rock-
ets, not war missiles. This is like
the massed flight they sent up
about two years ago, remem-
ber? We never did figure out why
they had to take the whole fleet
out. But with what’s going on
below, this must mean something
important. Think we should alert
HQ?”

They obviously should, as soon
as they were over one of their
own stations. The rule was clear
on that — when in doubt, shout!
But meantime, they’d have to
watch while still in view.

There was a faint spot of light,
and Scarfield grunted. “They’re
blasting off! Maybe we can plot
orbits and — ”

The bright spot split into
lances of fire, exploding savagely
outwards ! Every drop of mono-
propellant in the tanks must
have let go at- once to make such
a flare. Then, before Blane could
catch his breath, there was an-
other flare and another. Sudden-
ly the whole field was a great
spread of flame as the other
rockets were exploded by the
savage blast of the first.

Before the Goddard had passed
beyond view, they knew that
every Russian ship on the field

THUNDER IN SPACE

was totally demolished — which
meant, according to Scarfield’s
estimate, every ship that could
make the trip up to the Sulky.

They stared at the screen in
shocked silence while Blane
slowly began to realize the impli-
cations. It had happened while
they were directly overhead.
What would that mean to the
ever-suspicious people of Russia
who were already conditioned to
think of the Goddard as their
greatest enemy? What could be
made of that in a world already
close to the edge of panic?

Ill

B Y the time the Goddard was
over the North Pole where
she could make radio contact
with Alaska, the news was al-
ready out. For once, Tass had re-
leased the news of a catastrophe
without delay. The ground radio
confirmed the fact that every
supply ship for the Sulky had
been wiped out, and that the de-
tonation had been so great that
even ships being assembled near-
by had been wrecked hopelessly.
It would be three months before
Russia could again reach her sta-
tion.

Later news filtered in slowly.
Most of it had to be picked up
from the regular FM news broad-
casts that filtered through the
ionosphere. A Couple of the sci-
entists who had learned Russian

interpreted the news from Radio
Moscow on their next trip over.

Surprisingly, there were no
claims of American sabotage.
Then Blane wondered whether it
was so surprising. With the level
of fear in Russia as high as else-
where, it would probably have
been a grave mistake for the
leaders to suggest that any Amer-
ican sabotage of territory so far
inside Russia was possible. The
people had to count on the invul-
nerability of their station for
what little hope they had; how
that worked when the supply
ships were already ruined was
more than he could guess, but he
had long since given up trying to
understand the devious game of
propaganda being played on
Earth.

At least for the moment, the
disaster was not being turned
into another excuse to push the
seemingly inevitable war another
millimeter closer to the brink.
Maybe the whole affair might re-
sult in some decline of tension.
Once the , American ships were
sent up to supply the Sulky on an
emergency basis, there might be
a little good will from Russia and
self-satisfaction at a good deed
in America. That could give a
breathing spell.

Blane had almost forgotten
Manners and the worry over the
strange increase in radioactivity.
He had sent Manners’ latest fig-
ures down with a query for in-

AMAZING STORIES

structions at the first chance to
do so by tight-beam radio that
would not leak security, and then
had let the matter drop from his
mind. It was several hours later
when his secretary announced
that Peal and Manners were in
the outer office.

Manners looked both more wor-
ried and strangely satisfied, as if
he were bursting to cry his I-
told-you-so. But Peal’s face was
drained of any emotion except
surprise.

The scientist nodded. “Captain
Manners’ figures were quite ac-
curate. We’ve got to evacuate
nearby sections of the station. In
a way, we’re lucky — radiation
travels in straight lines, and the
hull curves away from it here.
There is about three hundred
times normal radiation in there,
and it’s coming from inside the
warheads. It isn’t lethal yet —
men can work there for a few
hours at a time ; but at the rate
it’s increasing, it soon will be.
Any word from Earth?”

Blane dug through his in bas-
ket, and finally located a blue
slip. It was in code, but Devlin’s
instructions included the loca-
tion of the code book. He riffled
through it for phrases each dec-
agraph covered. Situation within
normal expectations — results be-
ing studied here — continue as at
present — will apprise if new pro-
cedure advisable — regard as ut-
most top secret — invoke maxi-

mum security measures over af-
fected personnel.

N O word,” he said bitterly.

Probably he wasn’t even sup-
posed to say that much, or to
discuss it with the other two. But
he chose to interpret the part
about continuing as at present
to permit the discussion to con-
tinue. He tried to focus his mind
on what facts he knew. “I
thought the radiation rate of the
stuff in the warheads was con-
stant, and that the casings were
adequate shielding.”

Peal nodded. “That’s what’s
driving me out of my mind at
the moment, Jerry. Except when
it reaches critical mass, urani-
um-235 is supposed to have an
absolutely fixed half life; it
shouldn’t increase under any cir-
cumstances, and the mass of
each section in those bombs
can’t increase to become nearer
critical, either. It simply can’t
happen, according to any physics
I ever learned. But it’s doing so.”

“What about the effects of cos-
mic rays?” Blane asked. Devlin
might have learned more from
Earth, and even if his story to
Manners had been patently un-
true, it might still offer some
clue.

Peal shook his head, but some-
what doubtfully. “On Earth,
they’re mostly only mesons
from strikes by cosmic radiation.
Out here, we get only the ex-

THUNDER IN SPACE

tremely hard radiation — the
shielding of the ship is too thin
to affect them. Maybe they might
speed up the half-life a little —
but they shouldn’t make it in-
crease. I’ve been thinking about
them, too. Meteorites show a
much greater decay of uranium
to lead than the ores on Earth,
which might indicate some effect
from cosmic radiation. But un-
less they somehow produce an-
other isotope from uranium
that’s raising the activity, I
can’t figure it out. We need a top
level nuclear physicist for this,
and we don’t have one here.”

They discussed it at greater
length, but without adding any-
thing to their speculations. Blane
felt the hairs on the back of his
neck prickling, and was con-
scious of a vague picture in his
mind of the warheads ticking
away and getting set to blast
spontaneously. But he put the
idea aside. Earth might be a lit-
tle careless of their welfare un-
der the pressure of emergency,
but right now Earth would never
risk losing the station. It was
only his overactive imagination.

He finally assigned Peal and
Manners back to the task of
studying the matter as best they
could, and tried to dismiss it
from his mind. There were more
than enough other worries about
the station. The cryogenics lab
was in trouble — the group from
Earth who had used the labs had

badly depleted supplies and been
careless about equipment that
was common enough below but
difficult to obtain here. The evac-
uation of the laboratories near
the bomb bay threw severe
strains on research, and Earth
was demanding that some of it
be speeded up. And the weather
study was being crippled by the
need to waste too much attention
on detailed studies of every sec-
tion of Russia. The whole sta-
tion was on emergency orders to
do twice as much as could possi-
bly be done.

H E waited for news that sup-
plies were being sent from
Johnston Island to the Sulky,
but no such news appeared. In-
stead, the news carried details
that were only rumors of some
effort of the United States to
force Russia to disarm the Sulky
unilaterally in return for the
loan of eight rocket ships and
launching facilities. If such an
offer had been made, it must
have been turned down flatly.
The next' day there was not even
a mention of it.

When Edwards came up again,
Blane sent for him at once. The
pilot had made a superb land-
ing of his ship at Canaveral, and
had then been jetted back to the
Island. Normally he would have
taken a long layover there before
making another trip up, though
he had senior pilot’s right to se-

AMAZING STORIES

lect or refuse any flight he chose.
Blane was curious about his rea-
sons for choosing the first trip
he could make.

Edwards lost no time in re-
porting. He hadn’t stopped to re-
move his emergency space suit,
though he’d left the helmet and
the oxygen tank somewhere. He
clumped in, accepted coffee, and
began talking even as he shucked
off the suit.

“It’s a wonder they even let me
fly up supplies to you,” he grum-
bled. “Jerry, it’s rough down
there. They’ve got everything
sewed up under controls. I’m sur-
prised they didn’t suspect me of
plotting an orbit for the Sulky
instead of here. Damn all govern-
ments that have to mess into
space affairs!”

Some of the details came out
slowly, with more color than clar-
ity. But Blane gathered that they
had reacted violently to the news
that the government was trying
to use the emergency as a means
of forcing disarmament on the
Russian station.

“You mean they actually did
refuse help without such an
agreement?” Blane asked. He
hadn’t wanted to believe the ru-
mors.

Edwards nodded angrily.
“They issued a ban against any
efforts to help without such
agreement. They most certainly
did ! And you can guess how that
set with us. Maybe the Sulky’s

full of Russians, but they’re
Russian spacemen! Hell, when
we were building this wheel here
and one worker got thrown out
into space, three of their pilots
came up in ships to help find him
— and one did find him. Remem-
ber? Sure you do. They hated our
building here, but they wouldn’t
let a man die in space if they
could help. So we owe them a
few trips.”

T WO of the pilots had tried to
steal one of the ships fueled
and supplied for the Goddard,
but had been caught before they
could take off. Now they were
under guard, and the ships were
being watched carefully. Ed-
wards had been permitted to
make the run only after a session
in which it was pointed out that
landing rights would be denied
any ship contacting the Sulky.
And the other pilots were almost
in a state of revolt, with nearly
all of the old-time ground force
supporting them.

“The government can’t stick
to such a policy,” Blane said
doubtfully. “They can’t gain any-
thing. The Sulky must have
enough supplies for existence un-
til at least one ship can be as-
sembled and sent up. All we’ll
do by holding them up is to in-
crease the danger. They must be
bluffing for a while, hoping
Russia will crack, but ready to
send supplies in a few days.”

THUNDER IN SPACE

Edwards stared at him in sur-
prise. “You mean you don’t
know?” Then he slapped his
thigh in disgust. “No, of course
you don’t. I keep forgetting you
couldn’t. The Sulky couldn’t
reach you by radio with the
Earth in between. Jerry, we got
a beamed message on the Island
from her when she went over one
time. SOS. She’s in trouble right
now. Can’t get help from her
base, and can’t wait for negotia-
tions, so she tried calling us di-
rect. Security clamped down on
the message at once, but the ra-
dio operator’s as much space as
we are, so he made a dupe copy
for the pilots. The day after the
blowup at the base, the Sulky
ran into a meteoroid big enough
to rip out part of her solar boiler.
She lost most of the mercury into
space, and the rest isn’t enough,
even when she’s patched. She has
to operate on batteries right now,
and that won’t last more than
another day or so.”

Blane winced at the picture. A
station was dependent on power
for its existence. Lights, air cir-
culation, water for balance, heat
regulation, and even the growing
of plants to keep the air breath-
able depended upon a steady sup-
ply of power. Like the Goddard,
the Tsiolkovsky used a reflecting
trough on top that directed the
intense solar radiation onto a
pipe filled with mercury which
was heated to gaseous form and

operated the boiler and genera-
tor. It was far cheaper and safer
than atomic power.

“The government knew of that
when it refused help?” he asked
incredulously.

Edwards grunted. “Didn’t
start their extortion plans until
they knew!” Then he grinned
slowly. “Funny thing, Jerry,
when I checked over the supplies
I brought up for you, I found
some of the boxes of equipment
got mixed up in shipment. They-
’re full of cans of mercury! I
left them aboard the ship, figur-
ing you wouldn’t need them
here.”

B LANE found his face mus-
cles were trying to frown
and smile at the same time, and
he caught himself before he
could laugh. He went to the door
to make sure it was locked, and
came back to his desk slowly.

In theory, it was entirely pos-
sible to reach the Sulky from
the Goddard, and every pilot
knew the general orbit. The
Sulky and the Goddard each took
two hours to circle Earth, with
one an hour behind the other. If
a ship took off outward with a
reasonable use of power it could
get into an ellipse around Earth
that would take three hours to
bring it back to its starting point
— and by then, the opposite sta-
tion would be at that point. The
maneuver could be made both

AMAZING STORIES

ways with the fuel a final stage
could carry easily enough.

“You don’t have fuel enough,”
he decided.

“Nope. But you do — out in the
blasted lunar ships that are still
waiting appropriations.”

Blane hadn’t had time to think
of the lunar ships during the
hectic days of commanding the
station. But Edwards’ statement
was true enough. The ships had
been nearing completion for the
long-desired American explora-
tion of the Moon a year ago when
Congress had eliminated appro-
priations for everything not con-
nected with the current emer-
gency. They still trailed the sta-
tion a few miles in space. The
workers had all returned to
Earth, but the fuel still lay in
the plastic balloons. The little
ferry ship used between the ships
and the station was still here,
too. It could be used to bring the
fuel back easily, since it had been
equipped with tanks for moving
fuel between supply rockets and
the balloons.

“It wouldn’t work,” he said at
last. “They’d spot your ship
from Earth if you took off for
the Sulky. They’d even guess
where you’d gone when you did-
n’t return on schedule. They
might even refuse to let you
land, and they’d probably make
things impossible up here, too.”

“I’ll take my chances — and so
will you,” Edwards protested.

“Not unless it’s necessary.
Sure, somebody’s got to make the
trip. But it doesn’t have to be
your ship. The ferry’s a lot smal-
ler, but it can handle that much
cargo and fuel on such an orbit.”
He grinned at Edwards’ stubborn
expression. “Look, you know 1
ran it for a year while we built
the station. I can still pilot it,
and Austin Peal can handle the
math in computing the orbit.
I’ll get it over to you and you
can transship the mercury, then
take off on schedule. Then let
Earth guess what happens.”

“And what will they do to you
if they find out?”

“Nothing — officially. Nobody
has told me officially that the
policy is against offering help, so
I’ll proceed in terms of the older
tradition. When you let slip the
trouble on the Sulky and I found
cans of mercury stored in the
ferry, what could I do but as-
sume the station was expected to
get them to the other station?”
Blane grinned, feeling sudden re-
lief from his other worries. “Be-
sides, I don’t give a darn what
they do to me. I’m only tempo-
rary boss here.”

Edwards nodded. “I'll take
your last reason, J erry. Only
don’t bother moving the ferry. I
can work it over beside my ship,
and it’ll make your explanation
sound better. Good luck. And if
you do get in a jam — all the guys
will be on your side.”

THUNDER IN SPACE

. He went out while Blane start-
ed off to find Peal. He had doubts
about involving the scientist
now. The man had never been
part of a real space team. Yet
someone had to do the prelimi-
nary computing. He had more
doubts as he tried to explain
things to Peal ; the man listened
quietly, making no comment,
and with no visible approval or
disapproval.

When Blane finished, Peal
stood up, nodding. “Thanks for
letting me in on it, Jerry. You
get the fuel and I’ll have the com-
putations off the calculator by
the time you get back here.”

r PHE ferry was a sausage-
-*■ shaped structure of thin metal
and plastic with an airlock at
the front and a small reaction
motor at the rear. It had been
modified to hold either solid or
liquid cargo and to operate off
the monopropellant fuel instead
of the lox and kerosene used
when the station was built. There
was even a plastic pipe between
the cargo tank and its fuel tank
to save separate filling, and no
further modification was needed.

Blane took it out after check-
ing the stowage of the mercury
cans. He was slightly rusty, but
he steadied down as he jockeyed
into position beside one of the
three lunar ships. He’d picked a

balloon on the sunward side, and
the warm fuel was soon flowing
into his tank, forced through a
long tube by a tiny, built-in
pump. When he took off again,
the ferry was overloaded and
sluggish, but it showed no evi-
dence of weakness. Of course, if
they ran into a meteoroid of any
size, they’d be ruined — but the
chances of that were very slight.

Peal was already outside the
hub, dressed in space suit and
clinging to a convenient hand-
hold. He came through the lock,
carrying his computations, a
small telescope, and an extra
spacesuit for Blane. “May need
this,” he suggested. “Our front
end probably won’t fit the seal
on their hub.”

Blane nodded. He should have
thought of it. But his chief in-
terest was in the orbit. It had
been figured so that they would
accelerate away from the station
and up from Earth at low thrust,
well within the limits of his
power. There was a table of times
and star angles to locate his cor-
rect course. Peal had done an
excellent job, far better than
Blane had expected.

“I spent two years on the Is-
land,” the scientist explained. “I
learned a little about astroga-
tion, though I’m no navigator.
But this is a simple problem.”

Essentially, it was ; to make it
simpler, it was always possible
to make minor corrections, since

AMAZING STORIES

THUNDER IN SPACE

they had more than enough fuel.

“If the stations were run pro-
perly, there’d be a regular serv-
ice between them,” Peal sug-
gested when they were coasting
along in their orbit. “It would be
cheaper to exchange supplies
than to rush up a sudden emer-
gency shipment from Earth. In
fact, if a private company had
built the first one, there would
probably be a dozen stations by
now, all connected. And we’d
take over the television relay
business, too.”

At times, Peal sounded like
the editorials from a business
magazine, but Blane could find
no fault with his logic. The fact
was that the stations were basi-
cally service companies, deliver-
ing useful services for which
they could collect enormous fees
without complaints. But they
were forced to render most of
their service to a military strug-
gle no one wanted and for which
no one wanted to be forced to
pay.

P EAL went on, warming to his
theme. “History proves my
point, Jerry. The stations have to
be too complicated in function
and too flexible in purpose to be
run properly by men who have
to think in terms of Earth poli-
tics. Every nation that ever
tried controlling a major indus-
trial set-up has found it won’t
work. They tried socializing rail-

roads, airlines and factories —
not to mention farming — and the
experiment failed. Every Russian
industry today is run independ-
ently by its own board who share
in the profits, no matter how
much theoretical ownership rests
with the government. And China
is now nothing but a system of
state capitalism, whatever they
call it there.”

“Fine,” Blane admitted. “Why
didn’t private industry build the
stations, then?”

Peal grimaced, then grinned.
“That’s the weak point, of course.
You can’t sell shares to fund a
venture until the public sees the
need — and they couldn’t see the
need of space until military pres-
sure put the stations up and
proved they had other values.
But now the stations have proved
themselves. The government
should turn them back to private
hands under long term loans, the
same as they turned back fac-
tories after the war.”

“They won’t, though. And it’s
not just that no power is ever
voluntarily given up,” Blane
pointed out. “They won’t sell the
stations because they’re up here
where no government on Earth
could tax them. They might even-
tually, otherwise, but no govern-
ment is going to lose its profit
without getting taxes in return.”

For a second, Peal started to
argue. Then an expression of
surprise crept onto his face. He

AMAZING STORIES

/llG

sat silently through most of *

trip. Like most scientists, h^

probably considered himself

fair amateur economist, but b* 5 .

f?ic

overlooked one of the most ba p
aspects of economy — the
that governments also had ^
operate on enough of a profit ^
pay their executives and bo
holders.

At the end of the wide-loop> ng
three hour orbit, Blane was s^ r

Xl6

prised and pleased to see that
could locate the Russian stat*^
through the telescope. They
made corrections according .
Peal’s figures, and the scient'
had proved to be a better ast’
gator than could have been f X
pected. Only a tiny correct* ve
blast was needed to bring tb^ m
into line with the Sulky

A S they drew near,

stared in amazement. Ji e

fQY

seen pictures, but they had ne v
conveyed the true feeling of (

on
ce.

station. Russia had a tradit’

of building massively for sp*>'

Her early ships had been he^ vy

and unsophisticated, relying
strength, size and power,
station was the same. It res^

rfhe

bled the Goddard superficia

hi-

lly-

but it was three times as lai-^ 6 ’

H an

and must contain more t ^

twenty times the total volume
had a solid, substantial look t' 1
was indefinable.

The ferry contained a tiny >a .

dio, but Blane had not expeC

ted

it to be useful, since it was ad-
justed for the frequencies that
had been used by the work forces
who built the Goddard. He
reached out and turned it on, ex-
pecting nothing. Yet there was
a voice coming from it, speaking
excellent English. It was a fe-
male voice, and a pleasant one.

“Ahoy, space taxi ! Tsiolkovsky
calling taxi. Oh, for Pete’s sake,
don’t you Americans have two-
way radio? Wiggle your tail or
something so I’ll know you’re re-
ceiving, and I’ll give you landing
instructions !”

Peal grinned and picked up the
microphone. “Ahoy, Sulky.”

“Ah. So you can answer. Then
if you can match our orbit, come
beneath the hub. The smallest
landing net will fit the nose of
your taxi, if our records are cor-
rect. You did bring the mercury,
didn’t you?”

“We brought it,” Peal assured
her.

“Then in the name of science
and humanity, I thank you. And
— and I’m so glad to see you,
I’ll be there to kiss you wel-
come !”

“There are two of us,” Peal
started to answer, but she had
clicked off. He watched as Blane
began jockeying into position,
cranking furiously at the little
weighted wheel that controlled
the angle of the ferry. “Pretty
sure we’d come wasn’t she?”

“Edwards had a beam antenna

THUNDER IN SPACE

on his ship. He could have tipped
the Sulky off on his way down,”
Blane said. The little ship was
finally lined up and he blasted
forward gently against the small
landing net. The nose settled
firmly into a silicone doughnut
that formed a perfect airtight
seal. They wouldn’t even need to
wear spacesuits.

T HERE were three girls and
four men waiting for them in-
side the enormous hub. Six
moved forward promptly to be-
gin transferring the cans of mer-
cury, but one girl, shorter, darker
and prettier than the others,
stepped forward. She kissed both
of them — solemnly on both
cheeks after the Russian formal
fashion. Then she held out her
hand.

“I’m Dr. Sonya Vartanian.”
Peal introduced Blane and
himself. After the handshaking,
Blane gestured toward the main
station, eager to see it and look-
ing for an excuse. “I’m delight-
ed to know you. But 1 think I’d
better see your commanding of-
ficer.”

“I’m in command.” She said it
quite simply. Then at their sur-
prise she chuckled. “We don’t
have the male chauvinism of
America. Besides, all the military
officers were below when — when
everything was destroyed. But
perhaps you’d like to see our sta-
tion?”

T HERE was a great deal that
was crude, and some that
seemed to be handmade where
American products were smooth-
ly machine made. But generally,
it was something to arouse envy
in Blane. Obviously, there had
been no effort made to save on
costs here, and the great Russian
boosters had lifted fantastic
weights where American engi-
neers had been limited to what
ships of lesser thrust would car-
ry. With no restrictions on cost
or size, the Russian engineers
had simply designed for what
they felt desirable, rather than
what was possible. The command
suite was even equipped with a
bar that contained a private re-
frigerator, though that was now
off, due to the need to save power.

The quarters of the staff were
spacious, and many showed signs
of never having been occupied.
The laboratories were beautiful-
ly equipped, and again less than
a third had ever been used.

“We had great plans — but now
we are limited. The threat of war
makes even our leaders hesitate
to begin so many long-range
plans,” she explained.

Peal nodded. “You see, Jerry?
It’s the same here. Waste and
inefficiency. This place could
make ten times the profit of any
other comparable investment,
but it’s wasted under govern-
ment control.”

Sonya darted him a sudden

AMAZING STORIES

piercing gaze and stopped in her
tracks. Then she laughed uncer-
tainly. “You’ll forgive me, Dr.
Peal. But those words — they
were just what I was going to
say.”

“You?” Blane stared at her
doubtfully. “Isn’t capitalistic
talk deviationist, at least?”

“Not to an American, and
sometimes now not at all.” She
laughed, as if relaxing from some
strain. “We study American eco-
nomics in our schools, just as we
learn your language. Sometimes
capitalism seems romantic to us
— selling stocks, floating loans,
such things. But sometimes I
think about what could be done
if this were all to be a separate
nation, free for all time.”

They crossed a great empty
section of the station, and Blane
recognized that they had already
been through there twice before.
He saw that Sonya was staring
at him intently again as he
glanced about more carefully.
He moved closer to her, his eyes
moving from her face to scratch-
es on the floor and back. She
shook her head faintly, and he
let the question die unasked.

They ended the grand tour in
her office. The power was already
on, and the refrigerator was
humming. There was no ice, but
there was cold water for the
drinks she offered them. “You
might stay for dinner,” she sug-
gested.

Peal seemed embarrassed.
“You’ll need your supplies . .
he began.

“Supplies?” She laughed at
that. “Dr. Peal, here we have
supplies to last twice our num-
ber for a year, even without a
ship. You will stay?”

Blane shook his head. They’d
spent too much time already. She
accepted the refusal and accom-
panied them to the waiting taxi,
holding out her hand in farewell.

“Sometime, when you need
help, remember we are here,” she
told them. “If there should be
any danger or trouble, we are
anxious to offer you what we can
give.”

It was delivered in an almost
formal tone, as if now she were
rephrasing from her own lan-
guage.

T HE trip back was simpler than
the first trip, since the ferry
now carried no cargo and only
half as much fuel. It responded
more readily. Peal was silent un-
til they were well away from the
Sulky. 'Then he shook his head
as if coming out of a brown
study.

“Jerry, where do they keep
their bombs? We covered every
single inch of that station — we
went into every room and cranny.
I watched to make sure she was-
n’t just doubling back. She did,
sometimes, but she showed us
the whole thing, all the same.

THUNDER IN SPACE

And there were no bombs or
missiles big enough to dump
warheads on Earth. There was
one place where they should
have been, with what could have
been outside release chutes. But
it was empty, though there were
scratches on the floor where mis-
siles might have stood.”

Blane nodded, remembering
the place they’d been led across
three times. “I know, I saw it.
They don’t have bombs. They
had them, but they’re gone. And
Sonya Vartanian meant us to see
it, too. She didn’t quit leading us
across the place until she knew
I’d guessed.”

W HY let us know ? So we could
report that they’ve been
pulling a colossal bluff at those
disarmament meetings? That
doesn’t make sense.”

“No.” Blane had been doing
his own thinking. “Nobody
would believe us — it’s incredible,
and they’d be sure we’d been
duped neatly. They wouldn’t dare
believe us. And it isn’t because
Russia is too civilized to use
bombs, either; that station was
better designed for war than
ours, and policies don’t change
that fast. My guess is that
they’ve been gone from the sta-
tion two years now.”

Peal considered it. “That
would be when we spotted the
first mass of all their ships to-
gether — probably carrying the

missiles back to Earth in emer-
gency action. Then that flight
that blew up must have been set
to carry new missiles up, right ?”.

Blane nodded. It wasn’t a hap-
py idea. It would have taken
some very good reason for Rus-
sia to remove her missiles dur-
ing a period of rising tension
and hold off for two years be-
fore further pressures forced her
to resume the idea of stockpiling
weapons in space.

H E studied the distant Goddard
through his telescope as
they began to draw near. “Maybe
I’m wrong, Austin. But they first
put warheads out in space a cou-
ple of years before we could. And
maybe those warheads began to
go through a rapid increase in
radioactivity a couple of years
before Manners noticed that ours
were doing the same. If so, it
must have been a pretty serious
warning to make the officials dis-
arm the station secretly.”

“The girl wanted us to see that
the bombs were gone, and she
couldn’t talk about it. Then she
put too much emphasis on that
business of offering help if we
were in danger.” Peal grimaced.
“It all adds up.”

“How much longer will we
have?” Blane asked.

The scientist shook his head.
“I don’t know, Jerry, and I’m not
good enough a physicist to find
out.”

AMAZING STORIES

T HE return was a letdown,
after the tension they had
been building between them.
Blane put the ferry away, leaving
no traces of the trip in it, and
slipped quietly back into the hub.
Things looked miserable now,
cramped and forced together,
after the spaciousness and rich-
ness of equipment on the other
station. But he forced that bitter-
ness from his mind.

A Congressman had stated the
official policy years before. “Sure,
they got something bigger and
stronger. But we got the old
American spirit. Didn’t our boys
conquer the whole British navy
with nothing but little wooden
sailing ships once?” And hence,
of course, it didn’t matter how
badly matched the stations might
be. Nobody bothered to comment
that the American fleet had
grown strong by freebooting,
that both sides were using little
wooden ships, and that there was
never more than a small fraction
of the British navy along the
American coast. Facts merely
got in the way of good sentiment.
The Congressman had been
elected three times since then
and still fought hard to keep any
money from getting into space,
though he yelled loud and often
for the need of teaching the
enemy a good lesson.

Blane went to his little room,

to bathe in water that was at
least hot and clean, and to
change into fresh shorts. He had
been gone for nearly nine hours,
and fatigue had made him look
older, but it wasn’t too much dif-
ferent from his looks after a
sound sleep. He went into the
office, yawning. The secretary
glanced up, shoved a new moun-
tain of complaints and thunder-
scripts at him, and went on an-
swering the phone. Apparently,
he hadn’t been too much missed.
It wasn’t flattering, but he’d ex-
pected it.

Routine held him for hours,
while he listened to the news
from Earth. The Russians were
announcing that they had never
asked for help from the Ameri-
can supply ships, that the Tsiol-
kovsky was quite safe, and that
under no conditions would any
political deals be made under
threats and pressure. It was done
with a nastiness that lent a ring
of sincerity to it.

And somewhere, the rumors
seemed, to indicate, America had
modified her stand, and was now
making overtures toward help-
fulness, which were brusquely
refused. There had been an obvi-
ous loss of support from some of
the smaller nations in the UN,
and that must have hurt.

Peal came in, looking more
haggard than Blane. The scientist
shook his head wearily. “The
count is up in the bomb bay. I’ve

THUNDER IN SPACE

been trying to sound some of the
chemists out about ways to test,
but I don’t think we can do it. We
don’t know what to do or to look
for. But I’m convinced now that
something is going on inside
those casings. It must be some
new isotope being created from
the uranium by the action of cos-
mic radiation. Those energies
are high enough to cause trans-
mutation. Whatever isotope it is,
it must be a neutron emitter, and
it’s stirring up the uranium, just
as increasing the mass does. The
temperature around the casings
is rising.”

“Still no idea of how much
margin we have?”

“Not exactly. But I can get
some idea from watching how
the temperature rises. Maybe a
few days, maybe a couple of
months.” Peal dropped to a
couch, rubbing his eyes. “It’s get-
ting too hot in there to work
without a protective screen, so
we can only make short tests.
But Manners and I will take
turns.”

H eadquarters was not

greatly impressed by the rise
in temperature that had been
noted, though the reply was
longer in coming this time. It
simply suggested he stand by for
later orders.

That night, a large meteorite
fell in Arkansas. It was metallic,
and big enough so that several

hundred pounds managed to sur-
vive the burning friction of
Earth’s atmosphere. A large area
saw the bright streak across the
sky and traced it to where it fell.
There it’s impact had knocked
over trees, destroyed a house and
the inhabitants, and killed a cow.
There was a large hole in the
ground where it had hit, and
still a trace of metallic fragments
around the cup.

Blane picked up the news ac-
counts almost at once on the ra-
dio in his office. He switched the
circuits around to connect all the
speakers in the station and threw
the master switch, giving every-
one a chance to hear.

It took almost no time for the
first reports to come babbling in
hysterically, claiming an atomic
missile had been sent down from
the Tsiolkovsky.

The official signal from Head-
quarters flashed out at Blane, and
he listened. They were declaring
a general alert, but it wasn’t red
and there was still a delay. Once
it went red,, it would mean put-
ting one of the plans already pre-
pared into operation, demanding
that he send his few men down
into the bomb bay to set the auto-
matic chutes into operation.
Then missiles would rain down
on Russian cities and bases.

Peal and Manners came in.
Manners would have to carry out
the orders. Blane glanced at him,
and saw doubt and worry etched

AMAZING STORIES

across the forehead. Could any
man start the holocaust going?
Or, believing that the Sulky
would be throwing bombs, as
Manners must still believe, could
any man refuse such an order?

Blane shook his head faintly
as he met Peal’s look. There were
no bombs on the Sulky. And no
bombs must fall from the God-
dard. But in the long run, would
it make any difference. There
were more than enough land-
based missiles to wipe out both
countries. And if Blane saw them
on his screens, getting set to
wipe out his nation, could he re-
fuse to order the bombs here into
operation ?

H E threw the side door of the
office open and heard the
mad action going on outside as
men were beaming down the full
power of their radio signals, giv-
ing the true nature and path of
the meteorite, trying to override
the frantic chaos already filling
the atmosphere.

Then the light winked out. A
voice that was weak and shaken
came from all the speakers. “At-
tention. This is official! The ob-
ject that fell from space has been
determined to be a natural mete-
orite. No attack has been ini-
tiated. There is no cause for
alarm . . .”

Blane cut off his speakers and
went back into his cabin, shak-
ing with reaction.

This time, there had been no
holocaust. This time the alert had
never gone red, and sane minds
had somehow prevailed. But how
long would sanity hold sway in a
world where every unnatural ac-
cident was a potential trigger for
a rain of bombs, a storm that
might destroy most of the life on
Earth and would certainly end
man’s adventure into space. It
wouldn’t really matter whether
the stations managed to get off
without retaliatory missiles from
Earth; once the ships and sup-
ply bases were gone, there would
be no possibility of continuing
life here. The men who fired the
missiles from these floating ar-
senals would be committing a
long and horrible suicide. Yet he
might have to order it — might
reach a stage where he would
even want to order it!

Peal was waiting for him with
the report on the temperature of
the casings when he came into
the office the next day. There had
been an increase of nearly two
degrees* and it began to look as
if the rise were an asymptotic
one, that might get out of hand
so quickly that there would be
little warning.

“It’s not much of a secret,
either,” the scientist stated. “I
don’t think Manners said any-
thing, and I’ve kept it as tight
as I could. But there are indirect
ways of noting things going on,
and the temperature gages in the

THUNDER IN SPACE

hull show signs already. The men
who service the bomb bay aren’t
all fools, either. They can guess
there’s trouble when they’re sent
in for only minutes at a time. So
rumors are spreading.”

Blane nodded. If the rumors
got out of hand, things would go
to pot in ways that might make
it impossible for them to meet an
emergency later. He threw the
master switch for general sum-
mons again, and began speaking
slowly, choosing his words with
care. He wasn’t going to lie, but
he couldn’t give them full infor-
mation. He was already violating
security to an extent that could
bring full official wrath on him.

He told them that there was
evidence that radioactivity was
leaking from the warheads,
though not in any measure to en-
danger the station at present.
He said simply that there had
been some related increase in
temperature noted, and that the
situation was being studied and
reported to Earth, where fuller
analysis was possible. It was all
true, so far as it went — and the
impression was as false as he
could make it.

B Y the time the station was
over Denver, where he could
contact headquarters on his
tightest beam, most of the rumors
had died, and the men were dis-
cussing the situation without
much excitement.

Surprisingly, headquarters
took his report and switched him
directly to a human, instead of
the tape receiver he usually had
to deal with. He gave the basic
facts, and reported precisely on
the fact that he had been forced
to inform the crew of the station.

The ' voice from below sighed
wearily across the thousand miles
of space. “Quite right, Blane.
Panic would be the worst thing
you could have. Forget about the
violation — we all have to cut that
at times. Now, in regard to your
basic situation, I’m going to do
the best I can for you. But I
wouldn’t worry about your boiler
trouble yet. It will be at least
three days before repairs are
really necessary, and before then
Devlin will be back with you. He
has a full grasp of what must be
done. And good luck.”

The voice cut off.

Blane sat staring at the wall.
Three days — it could only mean
that there were three days still
to go before the runaway radia-
tion inside the casings built up
too high for something to be
done — whether to dump the
bombs or what, he couldn’t guess.
But that was shaving it pretty
thin.

And how sure could he be that
they knew what was going on?
They had only his coded figures
to go by. Yet he had to trust
them. For once, he’d be glad when
Devlin was back.

AMAZING STORIES

He called Manners and Peal in.
“Seal off the bomb bay,” he told
them. “Just stick up a sign mak-
ing it off limits and spread the
word that nobody’s to go in until
Devlin gets back here — which
will be in a couple of days.” He
grinned at their protests, and
shook his head. “And that means
off limits to you, too. Earth says
we’re safe until Devlin gets here,
and he’ll have orders. Until then,
we can’t do anything, so forget
the warheads.”

It would be a lot easier for the
crew of the station to accept than
would the sight of Peal and Man-
ners going in and out in constant
efforts to check. And there was
nothing that their tests could
show, anyhow ; nobody here knew
enough to interpret what the
readings meant.

For a change, a sort of lucky
accident helped him. One of the
pipes in the circulating system
got clogged with something that
should never have reached the
water and burst. It made a mess
of most of one deck, and took a
full day’s cleaning and repairing.
That type of misfortune was
something the Goddard had long
since grown used to, and the
sight of great scientists working
with cooks and power men was
always a relief from the routine.
Maybe stations should be built to
fail in minor ways. If ever a ship
was built to cross the vast gulf
to another star, it should be as

imperfect as safety permitted.

On the surface, everything was
routine by the time Devlin’s ship
came up the next day. Devlin
must have more pull on Earth,
Blane decided; something had
boosted his stock. The ship had
taken off from Cape Canaveral —
the same ship that had taken him
down — in a tricky but successful
maneuver. Edwards, of course,
had been called in for the job.

Blane had only a few words
with the pilot, but he gathered
the ship would be standing by to
take Devlin off again at some un-
decided later time.

G ENERAL Devlin came into
the office with brisk, precise
steps, and stood looking at Blane
with a perfect picture of a mili-
tary man regarding an inferior.
His short body was as straight
as a rod, and his head was at pre-
cisely the right posture. But his
face looked grey, and a muscle
under one eye twitched. He mo-
tioned sharply as Blane stood up
to relinquish the seat behind the
desk.

“At ease. Stay where you are.
I’ve been cramped in a hammock
for hours, I prefer to stand. I’m
not taking over your command
this time, anyhow; I’m merely
here to execute one order before
I Have to report back down there.
How’s the trouble here?”

He listened to Blane’s report,
but hardly seemed to hear it. He

THUNDER IN SPACE

was apparently fully aware of
everything that Blane could tell
him. When it was done, he nod-
ded. “I was told to fill you in. I’ll
make it brief. Dr. Peal’s theory
that ultra hard radiation has
caused the transmutation of
some of the uranium to a more
dangerous isotope is correct. This
effects the same results as raising
the mass of each segment of the
uranium trigger to critical level
eventually. But there is still time
to save the station, and the level
of radiation will not make it dan-
gerous for the squad to handle
the missiles ; they will be exposed
too short a time. I would appreci-
ate it if you would instruct Cap-
tain Manners and his men to as-
semble in the hub in fifteen min-
utes. I’ll join you there.”

It wasn’t a lot to work on,
Blane decided. But he nodded as
Devlin went out, pacing toward
the coffee in the rec hall. He put
through the orders and shortly
moved out to join the eight men
and Manners. In the hub were
stacked a number of boxes. He
counted them, and nodded. There
was one for each of the missiles.

“Looks like we dump the mis-
siles,” Manners suggested, relief
heavy in his voice. “Those must
be program tapes for the guid-
ance computers on the missiles.”

Devlin’s voice sounded sharply
behind them, bringing them to
attention. If he had heard Man-
ners, he gave no sign of it.

“In those boxes are tapes for
the missiles. You are all familiar
with their installation and the
operation of loading the missiles
into the outer chutes. Each of
you will take one pile of the tapes
and repair to the bomb bay. You
are to enter there at precisely
nine hundred. The bay is hot, but
not dangerous for the length of
time required to complete this
operation. Captain, how long
should the operation of moving
all bombs into chutes require?”

“About twenty minutes, sir.”
There were motorized winches
that did the work, and the chutes
were one of the few pieces of
mechanism on the Goddard that
had not been made shoddily.

“Very good. Then at nine
twenty, I shall expect you to
emerge from the bomb bay and’
seal it again. You will then report
to Mr. Blane for further instruc-
tions.”

T^HE orders could have been
given just as easily outside the
bomb bay, or to Manners alone,
Blane realized. The whole affair
was too precise, too much by the
book. He frowned as he watched
Manners and the men pick up the
little boxes and move toward the
elevators. They were in no great
hurry, since they still had fifteen
minutes before they were to enter
the bomb bay. Then they were
gone. And Devlin shuddered
faintly and began wiping his face

AMAZING STORIES

with a kerchief. Something cold
shot up from Blane’s throat to
the roof of his mouth.

“What’s the destination on the
tapes?” he asked sharply.

Devlin stared at him or
through him. Then the stiff body
bent a trifle in a faint bow. “I
suspect you’ve guessed it, Blane.
They are all set to take an ellipti-
cal orbit that will bring them
against the Tsiolkovsky in mid-
Pacific.”

“They can’t!” But Blane knew
that they could be set for just
that — they had to be set for such
an orbit. With their bomb stock
about to become useless in a mat-
ter of a few days, and with too
little time to replace them after
the realization of what was hap-
pening, the military mind could
decide that the only hope was to
eliminate the danger from the
other station. It would mean a
stalemate in space, and might
possibly still leave Russia doubt-
ful enough about the striking
power left on the Goddard to in-
timidate her out of retaliating.

“It would wipe men out of
space!” he protested. “You’ve got
to cancel the order.”

Again Devlin gave the faint
bow. “Unfortunately, I have no
authority to cancel that order,
Mr. Blane. I cannot do so.”

Blane felt his fist move from
his hip before he realized what
he planned. It was an awkward
blow, as all activity in nearly zero

gravity must be, but it connected.
Devlin was lifted from his weak
contact with the floor and his
head banged savagely against the
roof. He drifted back toward the
deck, unconscious. Blane caught
himself and dashed for the eleva-
tor. There was still time to broad-
cast the facts to the station and
to stop the men from entering the
bomb bay. After that, he no
longer cared what happened to
him.

T HE meeting Blane had called
in the rec hall had been brief.
Men and women had stared in-
credulously at him as he told
them the facts — all the facts this
time. There hadn’t even been a
vote, since none was needed. Now
they were scurrying about, has-
tily following the orders he had
given. Manners was destroying
the tapes, the weather men were
collecting the reports of future
weather that should have been
filed within the next few days,
and others were gathering what
bits of scientific material and
notes they could. Edwards had
somehow joined them and was al-
ready out in the little ferry, head-
ing for the big lunar ship that
was fueled and almost completed.

Devlin sat in the hub still. He
was conscious now, but the blood
on his head ruined what would
otherwise have been a fine mili-

THUNDER IN SPACE

tary posture. He made his slight
bow, smiling bitterly in recogni-
tion of his helplessness.

“I’m oddly grateful to you,
Blane,” he said. “But I don’t ex-
pect you to believe me. And I find
I regret what will happen to you
and the men here when this
catches up with you. What are
your plans for me?”

Blane hadn’t thought of that.
He watched through the port as
the agly, clumsy lunar ship
moved toward the ship, to a dis-
tance where the ferry could be
used to carry them all out to it.

“You can pilot a ship, I re-
member. Take Edwards’ ship and
go back to the Island,” he de-
cided at last.

Devlin smiled. “I thought of
that, too. But with your permis-
sion, I’d rather come with you.
I’m curious. And I give you my
word I shall not interfere in any
way. Your case is hopeless, of
course — but so is mine.”

Blane shrugged. “Come along,
then.”

Loading everyone into the lu-
nar ship was a horrible period of
chaos. It had never been meant
to hold such a cargo of goods and
people. But somehow room was
found, and Edwards began mov-
ing out and away from the God-
dard — the station that was now
empty, except for the warheads
that were growing hotter with
each hour.

“I’ve called the Island,” he said

to Blane. “If the message got to
anyone except some lumphead, I
think they’ll be waiting for us.”

Blane nodded, but he found lit-
tle reaction to any news now. He
had made his plans in some split
moment between striking Devlin
and reaching the office. There
was nothing now to add to them.
There was only a grim determi-
nation and the hope that all
spacemen must share it — the de-
termination that somehow, men
had to stay out here and find an
honest destiny in space.

r PHREE hours later, when their

long ellipse brought them
within sight of the Tsiolkovsky,
he saw that there were ships
around the station. There were
no more than half a dozen now,
but he could see others approach-
ing. It was impossible for all to
leave at once, but the men there
had elected to join him, and they
had found enough sympathy
among the staff of the Island to
gain control long enough to ac-
complish their decision.

The awkward lunar ship came
to a reluctant stop less than half
a mile from the station, and
Blane began picking those who
were to go with him aboard the
little ferry that was in tow. Man-
ners and Peal and two others. He
was looking for a sixth when
Devlin moved into the group.
Blane started to order him aside,
and then shrugged.

AMAZING STORIES

They were almost as crowded
in the taxi that Edwards piloted
as they had been on the lunar
ship. But there was no thought
of that. The others were taking
their cue from Blane, and Blane
was simply waiting, frozen in his
determination until events could
shape his moves.

T^HE landing net snapped

around them, and they settled
into the silicone ring, and then
began moving into the huge hub
of the Sulky.

At least a dozen people were
waiting there — too many, Blane
realized. He hadn’t bothered to
consider the size of the group he
must meet. But he disregarded
that.

Sonya Vartanian moved for-
ward to greet him with the dou-
ble kiss and handshake. Her eyes
were unreadable, but her voice
was warm. “Welcome, gentlemen.
I am delighted that you remem-
bered our offer of aid in time of
trouble. You have our assurance
that—’’

Blane cut her off with a hasty
gesture. He wanted no speeches
from her. It had to be done at
once, or forgotten, as he had
planned it. His mind had no sec-
ond line of action. He began to
speak authoritatively ;

“In the name of the free terri-
tory of space, I seize this ship
and all that is on it,” he con-
tinued coldly, “I sever all ties

THUNDER IN SPACE

any may have with Earth here-
with. I ban all military opera-
tions from space. I declare that
no nation may own property in
space, but may only trade ac-
cording to the just laws and prac-
tices that shall be henceforth es-
tablished for space. I — ”

He was wound up to the point
where he could not stop, though
there was nothing more to say at
the moment.

But a sudden sound choked off
his words. It was a shout from
those who had come to meet the
crew from the Goddard. It was a
long, surprised crescendo that
slowly became a cheer.

S ONYA leaned forward, grasp-
ing his hands “Thank God,”
she cried in his ear. “Oh thank
God. I was so afraid you wouldn’t
see it.”

He blinked, beginning to feel
foolish. “You mean that you
agree? Without resistance?”

“We’ve been trying to find some
way to make it happen for two
years — ever since our comman-
der refused to permit our decay-
ing missiles to be used against
your station,” she told him. “But
we never really believed it could
happen.”

Blane knew that he had never
believed it, either.

He pulled her closer, beginning
to smile again. “In the name of
the free territory of space!” he
said, and kissed her.

VII

rpHE blaze in the heavens that

had signalled the end of the
Goddard was less than twelve
hours old. It had been a magnif-
icent funeral pyre to an epoch,
but it had not yet ended the
methods of diplomacy. It had
merely forced faster action.

The Premier of Russia and the.
President of the United States
sat together, trying to keep their
voices down and yet hear each
other over the noise and confu-
sion of the assembly hall in the
UN building. They were sur-
rounded by guards, as usual, and
the television cameras were fo-
cused on them. But they had so
far been unable either to agree
or disagree. They could only wait
until the time announced had ar-
rived, as most pf the world was
now waiting.

Then the great system of am-
plifiers and speakers went into
operation, and quiet began to de-
scend over the hall.

There must have been a greet-
ing of some formal kind, but few
heard it. Jerry Blane’s tired voice
was already setting forth his
written statement of demands
when the quiet was sufficient for
him to be heard. He read with the
voice of a man not used to mak-
ing a written speech sound nat-
ural, but nobody noticed.

The announcement of the facts
was obvious, but it took on added

power from the brevity that com-
pressed everything into a single
focus. America had lost a station
and Russia had no supply ships.
There was a supply base on
Johnston Island, but the ships
were all in space. Earth was com-
pletely cut off from contact with
space for months to come.

And Earth could no longer ex-
ist without that contact. Her
next weather reports were need-
ed within the week, and without
them the damage to crops grown
dependent on them might result
in famine for much of Earth.
Certain drugs had to be made in
space. There were hundreds of
needs, without which the econ-
omy of Earth would collapse. To-
day, in a real sense, Earth could
exist only by the use of a station
in space.

But the station could exist for
a longer time without Earth.
There was food and supplies for
more than a year. They were pre-
pared to wait, if need be.

Y OU cannot use force,” Blane’s
voice stated flatly. “For the
first time, the governments of
Earth cannot fall back on de-
struction when everything else
fails. To destroy us would make
your economic collapse inevitable
now. You cannot go back to your
past or the savage rules of your
past. You can only meet us hon-
estly and concede the just de-
mands we propose.”

AMAZING STORIES

Many were surprised at the
proposals — the joint work of two
years of thought on the Tsiolkov-
sky and a final flash of insight
on the part of Blane. They
wanted recognition from the UN
that they were an independent
territory. They wanted to incor-
porate as an independent stock
company on Earth, under direct
UN charter. For that, they were
willing to pay reasonable taxes
on operations done within any
country. They were willing to
pay a reasonable price, to be set-
tled by a committee of neutral
nations, for the two stations, for
the ships — and even for the Rus-
sian ships that were destroyed —
and for complete sovereignty
over Johnston Island, which
would now be worthless to Earth.
They would pay for this by the
issuing of stock, which could be
redeemed in time through the
profits that were easily provable
as more than adequate to meet
their debts. And they were to
have full control of further ven-
tures and services to be trans-
acted on the station. Weather
predictions would be on a sub-
scription basis, research on the
station would be by lease, and
other services could be adjusted
to a fair market value.

There was more, but much of
it was only repetition to make
sure all was understood. It fin-
ished with a simple request for a
quick decision, since no more

business could be done with
Earth until the agreements had
been reached.

The President nodded. “You’ll
agree?” he asked.

“What else can we do?” the
Premier asked in return. “He’s
right. We can’t continue today
without the services we’re used
to from space. A series of acci-
dents has left us no choice.”

The President settled back, ap-
parently satisfied. But he was
less sure. Had there been acci-
dents involved? Some man must
have hated war in space enough
to sabotage a fleet of ships. Other
men had hated that same war
enough to break all discipline
and strike out against a whole
planet. And men and women on
two separate stations had so de-
tested the thought of being
crushed in a surface struggle
that they had independently
schemed for this proposal.

He let his eyes rest on the dele-
gate from Israel who was yield-
ing to the delegate from Saudi
Arabia. It didn’t matter who
made the resolution to accept the
proposal of Blane on a tentative
basis. There would be no veto
possible now.

And on Earth, the tension was
relaxing already. Perhaps now,
even the surface enmities could
be settled in time.

The Fifteenth Space Disarma-
ment Conference was ending.

THE END

THUNDER IN SPACE

the WARRIORS

By TOM PURDOM

Non-violent resistance: a paradox in terms. Yet
all mankind knows that, with another war sure
to sound the death-knell of the race, that an effec-
tive non-violent means of settling disputes must
he found. Here is an original approach to what
may be the most important problem of our time.

Illustrated by ADKINS

L IGHTS out, the convoy crept
away from the Institute.
MacFarland rode in the lead car
with a driver and his chief psych
technician, Crawford Bell. Three
flat decked personnel carriers,
flying the colors of a mercenary
band, Sabo’s Own Highland Reg-
iment, patrolled their flanks. The
scientists rode in the third and
fourth cars in the line.

Crawford Bell had hooked a
computer and a full communica-
tions set to the rear of the front
seat. Now he pressed a button on
the commo 'unit.

“Fourteen,” a voice said over
the loudspeaker.

“What’s happening in town?”
Crawford Bell asked. He spoke
with the slow, gentle accents of
Tennessee.

“They’re turning everybody
out. There must be fifty guys
stirring everybody up, telling
them their country’s in danger
and they’d better fight. There’s a
mob coming your way.”

Mac-Farland looked across the
plain to the city. He could see
thousands of hand lights and a
dark shape sprawled across the
plain. The sound of the crowd
was so faint he decided it was
still a couple of miles away.

His hands tingled with excite-
ment. This was only his third
raid. He still hadn’t lost his zest
for modern warfare. War was a
contest played for high stakes,
the fortunes of nations, and it

ttsed every aptitude a man could
have- Moving into battle under
an African sky, he felt glad he
didn’t live in an earlier age. War
-was so interesting it would be a
shame to spoil it with the agony
and guilt of killing.

His objective was the airport.
He was supposed to put Doctor
Warren’s team of biochemists on
the midnight plane to Israel. An
agent of the Department of Com-
merce, he had been sent to Bel-
<Jerkan to talk Doctor Warren
into becoming a US citizen. It
had been a tricky job. Doctor
Warren hadn’t been anxious to
change countries. Only the offer
of 3 lab on the star ship being
built by the United States had
tempted him. “I’ll accept your of-
fer, Mr- MacFarland — if the
other members of my team accept
it. Talk to them. I won’t leave
without them.”

H ARASSED by the Belderkan
Department of Trade using
every weapon in the Twenty-
First Century arsenal of per-
suasion, MacFarland had wrest-
ed a grudging decision from the
other four scientists. Now all he
had to do was get them out of
the country. But Doctor War-
ren’S wife had warned the Belder-
kan government her husband was
switching his allegiance.

MacFarland studied the crowd
through his glasses. They must
have half the city out there. He

knew the scientists weren’t deep-
ly committed to leaving. If the
Belderkans managed to keep
them off the plane, they would
probably change their minds.

“We’re in for a night’s work,”
Crawford Bell said.

To reach the airport, they had
to make a half circle around the
city. “We haven’t lost yet,” Mac-
Farland said. “We’re going fast
enough to cut in front of them
before they get between us and
the airport.”

Standing up in the moving car,
he comforted himself by looking
at his troops. Crawford Bell was
a first-rate technician. His psych
team was one of the best in the
world. Sabo’s mercenary “Regi-
ment” had a global reputation,
too. So did the band of mercena-
ries hiding in ambush. If the
quality of an army counted for
anything, they had a fighting
chance. The position was bad but
the men were superb.

He was a soldier. He thought
of himself as a soldier and he
planned to conduct himself like a
soldier and win a victory for his
country. But he couldn’t use
physical violence.

Thirty-eight years before, the
governments of the world had fi-
nally realized international vio-
lence could no longer be tolerated.
Any violence between nations,
even a fist fight between private
citizens from different countries,
could trigger Earth’s destruction.

AMAZING STORIES

He knew the consequences to
all mankind of any physical vio-
lence. He knew it like he knew he
had two legs. He also knew that
if he twisted the little finger of a
Belderkan citizen, the UN In-
spector Corps would arrest him
within hours. The World Court
would sentence him to five years
in prison and fine the United
States far more than it could pos-
sibly gain from Albert Warren’s
work.

A HELICOPTER whined above
them. A spotlight pinned
them from the air.

“Masks,” MacFarland yelled.
Seconds later he peered at the
night from inside a plastic hood.
His mustache, rubbing against
the inside of the mask, tickled his
upper lip.

The helicopter didn’t drop
psycho-active gas. Instead, it
marked them with its light so
that far off the crowd would know
where its quarry was. A loud-
speaker begged the scientists to
remember the humble people of
Belderkan.

We taxed the labor of our peo-
ple to give you luxury. We built
you beautifid homes. We gave
you women, if you wanted them,
and all the laboratory equipment
you desired. We gave you old age
pensions. Remember the labors of
our people!

A line of automobile headlights
raced across the plain. MacFar-

land gave an order. The lights of
the convoy jumped on.

The line of enemy cars was
long and moving fast. He could-
n’t go around their rear and they
were moving fast enough to head
him off and hold him for as long
as the crowd needed to surround
the convoy.

He switched on his mike.
“Sabo, can you break their line?”

“Right. Allenby, attack the
cars !”

A personnel carrier, sixty men
standing on its deck, charged the
enemy vehicles. MacFarland
grinned when he heard the bag-
pipes wail.

The carrier headed toward the
tiny space between the fourth
and fifth vehicles in the enemy
line. It swerved suddenly and
half a dozen kilted troopers
j umped from the deck and landed
among the enemy vehicles. Fans
screamed as drivers maneuvered
to avoid running them over. A
second squad jumped off. A third
squad landed on their heels. Soon
only the piper stood on the deck
of the carrier, proudly erect as
his mess mates risked their lives
among rampaging machines.

The enemy line disintegrated.
MacFai'land picked out a hole
eighty yards wide and led the
convoy forward. As they passed
the carrier, he threw the piper a
salute.

“Well done,” he told the mike.

“Thank you,” Sabo said.

THE WARRIORS

“It was a good job,” Crawford
Bell said, “but we had all the ad-
vantages. Wait until it’s them on
foot and us mounted.”

'T'HE crowd had grown bigger.
-*• Now its roar could be heard
for miles. A helicopter hovered
over it, probably broadcasting
the same kind of propaganda as
the helicopter over the convoy.

Aiming for the airport, the
convoy had left the Institute on
a Northeast tack. In trying to
outrun the line of cars, they had
turned until they were moving
due north. The mob was running
north, too, and had almost placed
itself between the convoy and the
airport.

“Cut right,” MacFarland told
his driver. “Full speed ahead.
See if you can cross in front of
the crowd.”

The helicopters spotlight irri-
tated him. He didn’t like bright
lights. Turning around, he
checked to see how the scientists
were doing. They were all wear-
ing masks and their positions
told him nothing about their feel-
ings. He waved and one of them
waved back.

Now he could hear the helicop-
ter over the crowd. It was de-
scribing the logs that threatened
Belderkan. The situation didn’t
demand sophisticated propagan-
da.

In a world of unrestricted in-
ternational trade, with a hundred

and ten countries fighting to
maintain high living standards,
a nation had to maintain a good
balance between its exports and
imports. The new products tal-
ented brains could create were
the key to survival. Albert War-
ren, inventor of several valuable
life forms, creator of the cur-
rently accepted unified theory of
the life process, was one of the
world’s most valuable natural re-
sources. He and his colleagues
were worth several battles.

Three helicopters swooped over
the convoy. MacFarland ducked
and looked for signs of gas. The
helicopters held a position about
twenty yards in front of his car
and a few feet off the ground.

“Here it comes,” Crawford
Bell mumbled.

Men jumped out of the helicop-
ters. MacFarland’s driver re-
versed his engine. The convoy
screamed to a halt. The men
jumping from the copters hit the
ground and threw themselves
prostrate. In the tall grass they
could be anywhere. The helicop-
ter overhead switched of! its
light.

Another helicopter landed on
their left flank. A dozen Belder-
kans climbed out and ran toward
the scientists. “Don’t leave us.
Great men that you are, think of
our needs.”

From Sabo’s second personnel
carrier, a squad ran to intercept
the pleaders befox - e they made it

AMAZING STORIES

impossible for the scientists to
move. The drivers of the threat-
ened cars pulled out of the line.
Arms linked, Sabo's men man-
aged to keep the pleaders away
from the scientists.

'T'HE two cars carrying the sci-
entists parked next to Mac-
Farland. “No wonder you like
your work,” Lauchstein, the ge-
netic engineer shouted. The other
scientists didn’t act so enthusias-
tic.

MacFarland switched on his
mike. “Sabo, clear us a path
through that gang up ahead. If
you work fast, we can still out-
run the crowd.”

“We’re moving out,” Sabo
said.

The bagpipes screamed. Sabo’s
men leaped from their carriers
and moved out at a trot, the
whole “regiment” of one hundred
eighty men in the formation in-
vented by Sabo himself and used
by non-violent fighters all over
the world. Half the regiment
formed two parallel lines. The
other half broke into three-man
squads which hunted for a path
through the Belderkan squads.

The Belderkans stood up in the
grass. There were about fifty of
them. They tried to form a line
in front of the convoy, but Sabo’s
men jumping and blocking among
them thwarted that maneuver.
A leader shouted an order and
the Belderkans converged on the

convoy, obviously trying to place
one or two men so close to each
vehicle movement would be im-
possible.

The Belderkans were as disci-
plined and agile as Sabo’s troops.
Men danced and jumped in the
tall grass. Sabo maneuvered to
break a hole in the Belderkan
lines and send his two files
through it, forming a corridor
for the convoy. The Belderkans
maneuvered to obstruct the dou-
ble file and place men among the
vehicles. Since they only had to
hold the convoy until the crowd
arrived, the Belderkans had the
advantage.

“Look at it,” Crawford Bell
said. “It’s the second time I’ve
seen it. Look at it.”

I T was a spectacle, all right. The
polite dancing men, the wail-
ing bagpipes, the bodies that
never touched, never even
brushed lightly. But MacFarland
wasn’t enjoying it. He knew how
close he was to defeat. He didn’t
like the danger created when
heated men from different na-
tions faced each other on the bat-
tle field. So far no one had for-
gotten the discipline of the non-
violent fighter, but the old beast
still lived in the human psyche.
One shove by a Belderkan or a
mercenary and the tiger would
roar on the plain.

His hand gripped the side of
the car. Beside him Lauchstein

THE WARRIORS

said something. Then he heard
Doctor Umbana.

“Childish,” Doctor Umbana
snorted. “Ridiculous. When are
people going to outgrow these
silly games?”

“Probably never,” Lauchstein
said. “You can’t change human
nature.”

The bagpipes screamed tri-
umph. Sabo had outmaneuvered
the Belderkans. MacFarland’s
driver switched on the fans and
the car leaped between the lines
of running men. Outside the dou-
ble line, Belderkan soldiers ran
to block the exit from the human
alley. They were too late. When
the car shot out the front of the
line, the Belderkans were yards
behind.

“The crowd’s got us blocked,”
Crawford Bell said. “It took too
long.”

Sabo’s men were climbing onto
the decks of their carriers. The
crowd stretched between the con-
voy and the airport. Moving on a
short radius, it could block them
no matter how widely they cir-
cled.

MacFarland glanced at his
watch. Eleven o’clock. “What
have you got, Crawford?”

“Psycho gas’ll break them up.”

“No. Use psycho gas on a crowd
like that and they may go ber-
serk. It’s been a long time since
a human being died in a battle.
I’d hate to be the man responsible
for ending a winning streak.”

C RAWFORD Bell tapped the
keys of his computer. His
eyes studied the crowd. The night
before he had pi-ogrammed the
computer with data on Belderkan
culture. Now he turned his im-
mediate observations and trained
hunches into mathematical quan-
tities and fed them into the ma-
chine.

“You said you had some girls.”
“I’m calling them now,” Mac-
Farland said.

The crowd was about five hun-
dred yards away. The people
were singing the national anthem
of the Belderkan Republic. He
could barely hear the loudspeaker
above his head.

“Eagle nine here,” a voice said
on his radio.

“Eagle One. Can you see the
crowd ?”

“We’re watching them.”
“Attack. Hit them on my left.”
He put the mike down. Craw-
ford Bell was reciting a string of
figures into the mike.

“Sound,” the psych technician
said. “Tell Sabo to keep his pipes
quiet.”

The helicopter still marked
them with its spotlight. Its loud-
speaker pleaded with the scien-
tists. By straining his ears, he
could hear some of what it said.
The pleas made him a little un-
comfortable.

What had he said to Doctor
Umbana ? “It’s starship time.
Doctor. We’ve abolished interna-

AMAZING STORIES

tional violence. We’ve conquered
poverty and disease. We’ve ex-
plored the Solar System out to
Saturn and if we haven’t gone
further, it’s because nobody
thinks it’s worth the effort.
Where do we go now? We can’t
stand still. We’ve developed psy-
chological techniques that turn
men into brainless slaves and the
pressures of international com-
petition are forcing us to use
them. To stay free, the human
race has to expand. It’s star
ship time and we need you.”

That was still true. Doctor
Warren’s team belonged on a
starship project, and it might as
well be the United States project.
But even having them on the
Common Market or the Soviet
Republic starship would be better
than letting them stay in Belder-
kan. Or would it? They were do-
ing important research here.
They were the foundation of Bel-
derkan’s prosperity.

There was no way to reason
out which was better. Settle it on
the battle field and hope the right
side won. If that helicopter’s
propaganda was bothering him,
what was it doing to the scien-
tists?

“Sabo, muffle the pipes.”

T HE convoy slowed down. The
crowd had stopped running
and started walking. Their togas,
mostly emerald green and pearl
white, were made from a hard

fabric that gleamed in the light
from the helicopter. Through his
binoculars he tried to estimate
the percentage of men and the
percentage of young people. The
section right in front of him
looked young and predominantly
male. By now many of the women
and the older men had fallen be-
hind. That was something to be
glad about.

In the crowd several voices
screamed a war cry. Then the
whole crowd shouted and started
running toward the convoy.

Three personnel carriers
skimmed into view on his left. He
raised his binoculars and studied
their passengers. It was hard to
look at them with the detachment
of a commander inspecting his
troops. He was a young man and
the girls standing on the decks
of the carriers were pretty.

The carriers crossed the front
of the crowd and the girls
jumped off. They started un-
dressing as soon as they hit. Run-
ning into the crowd, they offered
themselves to the men.

Mike in. hand, Crawford Bell
leaned forward. “It’s all in the
timing.” Tension choked his
voice.

“Get it right,” MacFarland
growled.

There was only one girl for
every dozen men, but that was
enough to cause trouble. At least
two men per girl forgot their pa-
triotic fervor and yielded to op-

THE WARRIORS

portunity. Other men forgot the
invaders and tried to drag their
comrades back to duty. Women,
probably jealous, screamed
curses at MacFarland’s shock
troops.

The personnel carriers, all
their girls dropped, turned and
swept along the rear of the crowd.
On each deck a man tossed coins
and bills at the Belderkans.

The loudspeaker above the
crowd exhorted them to remem-
ber their country. The loud-
speaker above the convoy shamed
the scientists for using such tac-
tics.

“Now!” Crawford Bell shouted
at his mike.

MacFarland covered his ears
too late. Even through his mask
he heard the sound that rose from
the sixth vehicle in the convoy.

It was sound mathematically
calculated to shatter the nerves
of the crowd. Pitch, rhythm, in-
tensity, had been computed by
Crawford Bell’s machine. Even
MacFarland felt hysteria creep
up his back.

Its emotions shattered by the
women, the money and the sound,
the crowd lost its slight disci-
pline and its great motivation.
The people staggered under the
triple psychological punch.

Sabo’s personnel carriers
swept forward and threw a cor-
don of men around the left of the
crowd. The convoy raced toward
the airport.

M ACFARLAND could see the
airport through his binocu-
lars. The helicopter still marked
them with its light, but the
crowd was a long way behind.

“Cigarette?” Crawford Bell
asked.

“No thanks. I’m keeping my
mask on.”

The psych technician started
to take off his own mask, then
changed his mind. “They’re prob-
ably feeling desperate. This is
when I’d start using gas.”

“It’s eleven fifteen. We’ll be at
the airport in ten minutes.” His
eyes narrowed. “They must have
something left.”

The night wind made him
shiver. He adjusted the heating
unit in his tweed jacket. When
he looked up, he saw the lights of
the runway. Then he saw the
white dome of the terminal build-
ing. Before the airpoi-t fence and
the airport gate, a line of men
stood shoulder to shoulder.

Crawford Bell glanced at his
watch. “Here’s where I earn my
money.” His fingers tapped the
computer keys.

MacFarland’s stomach tingled.
He wanted to jump out of the car
and push the toga clad men aside
with his bare hands. Days of
frustration were reaching a cli-
max.

He switched on the mike. “Sa-
bo, we’ll have to stand toe to toe
with those boys and slug it out.
I want you to guard our rear.

AMAZING STORIES

Have your men put a tight line
behind us. Don’t let the crowd get
near the convoy.”

They halted in front of the air-
port gate, less than twenty feet
from the enemy line. The other
vehicles pulled up beside them.

The scientists parked on his
left. “You’ve done a good job,”
Doctor Warren said, “but it looks
like we’re not going any further.”

“Did you bring machine guns
and clubs?” Doctor Umbana
asked. “If you didn’t let’s go
home and get some sleep.”

MacFarland stood up. “Gentle-
men, we’ve got half an hour and
a good crew of technicians.” The
line of Belderkans looked grim
and unmoving. Their black faces
gleamed in the light from the
helicopter.

“Now,” Crawford Bell said.

Again, the awful sound rose
from the noisemaker. MacFar-
land tried to look indifferent but
after the first seconds he grabbed
his ears with his hands. It was
the scream of pain and madness
and the evil thing beyond the
campfire. The faces of the Belder-
kans distorted with anguish.

Using noise was tricky. How
hard did the air molecules have
to strike the ears or how painful
did the noise have to be, before
sound became physical violence?
The noise selected by the compu-
ter was supposed to be psycho-
logically, but not physically, un-
comfortable.

The noise ended abruptly. On
MacFarland’s right, one of Craw-
ford Bell’s technicians aimed a
battery of lights at the enemy
line. Flickering colors made shift-
ing patterns on the faces of the
Belderkan troops. The colors were
supposed to create mental confu-
sion and weaken motivation.

“Look at their faces,” Doctor
Warren said. “Wouldn’t a club be
more humane?”

T WO Belderkan trucks were
parked behind the line. Tech-
nicians came out of them and set
up lights which neutralized the
lights of the invaders.

A jet screamed into a runway
at the far end of the airport.
MacFarland watched it taxi to
the terminal building. It was the
flight the scientists were sup-
posed to leave on. He glanced at
his watch. Twenty minutes.

This was where the human im-
agination met its test. The mind
struggled to invent alternatives
to violence. There could be no ap-
peal to the enemy’s reason. Con-
flicting interests clashed head on.
Only maneuver and cunning
could win the day.

He stepped out of the car and
walked up to the Belderkan line.
“How much do you want? My
government’ll give thousands to
the man that lets us through.
We can give you things money
can’t buy. Our loveliest women.
A palace. Pleasure for the rest of

THE WARRIORS

your life. Don’t you like
money? Wouldn’t you like to be
rich?”

No one answered. Walking
down the line, he repeated his of-
fer. He stopped in front of a thin,
spectacled youth who couldn’t
possibly be older than nineteen.

“You can make your fortune in
a minute. The rest of your life,
you can do what you please.” He
named a famous beauty. “Would-
n’t you like her? She’s on our
payroll.”

The youth avoided MacFar-
land’s eyes. “I won’t be tempted.
I can’t be tempted.”

Doctor Umbana jumped out of
his car. “Oafs. Peasants. What
right have you got to stop us?
I’m a free man. Get out of my
way.”

MacFarland stepped in front
of the angry biochemist. “Get
back,” he hissed. “Do you want
to go to jail? I’ll handle this.”

“You’re the man that brought
us here. Kick them aside and
drive through. Won’t you go to
jail for your country?”

Lauchstein bellowed with
laughter. “Let MacFarland han-
dle this,” Doctor Warren said.
“Pete, come on back to the car.”

Doctor Umbana glared at his
colleagues. “I won’t stand for
this. We’re free scientists. We
have the right to travel where we
please.”

MacFarland swore to himself.
Already passengers were leaving

the terminal and walking toward
the airliner.

The crowd, sounding even
noisier than it had before, was
bearing down on the airport.
Sabo would hold them, of course,
but their pleas to the scientists
would be impossible to silence.

Crawford Bell jerked his
thumb at the enemy lines. “They-
’re carrying masks. We can’t use
gas on them.”

M ACFARLAND could see the
future as plainly as if it
were already a memory. The situ-
ation had a logic which could lead
to only one solution. It was a solu-
tion he had been dreading since
his first day in Belderkan.

“This is no place for psych
tricks.” He dropped a weary hand
on Crawford Bell’s shoulder.
“Keep working, but psych tricks
won’t budge those boys. They’re
disciplined and they’re in a good
position.”

“You aren’t giving up?”

He turned to face the Belder-
kans. “So you won’t be moved ?”
he shouted. “Well, I’m not mov-
ing either. I’m staying here until
I rot. You’d better have full stom-
achs and big bladders if you
want to keep me out of that air-
port.”

“A fine speech,” the helicopter
answered, “but we don’t care if
you stay or not, aggressor. Only
the five doctors count. You’re of
no importance.”

AMAZING STORIES

Doctor Umbana raised his fist.
“I won’t be forced.”

“Doctor Umbana,” the helicop-
ter said, “no one is forcing you
to stay. How can one force a cre-
ative mind to work? We only
want you to consider what you
are doing. We only want you to
see how much we are willing to
suffer.”

The jets of the airliner whined.
MacFarland glanced at his
watch. Five minutes.

“You’ve done a good job,” Doc-
tor Warren said, “and I’m certain
you’ll be commended by your su-
periors, but you’ve failed. I sug-
gest we go home and sleep.” His
two sons were sleeping on his
shoulders. They had been
drugged, at their father’s re-
quest, so they wouldn’t see the
attack on the crowd.

“Are you going to submit to
this bullying?” Doctor Umbana
demanded.

“I never was very interested in
this project,” Doctor Forbes said.
“I’m only here because the rest
of you want to go. And I’ve been
listening to that helicopter. Some
of that’s true, you know. They
must want us an awful lot to do
all this.”

“They don’t want us,” Doctor
Umbana said. “They’re greedy.
Those people out there are only
your employers. Are you going to
let them treat you like a slave who
doesn’t have the right to change
jobs Don’t you have any pride?”

“He has a point,” Doctor Sani
said.

“Suppose you go back now,”
MacFarland argued. “They’ll
know they can make you stay and
they may not give you such good
terms next time your contract is
renewed.”

“True,” Forbes said, “but aca-
demic. You can’t break their line.
You might win a starvation
match, but I’m not going to stay
here that long. It isn’t worth it
to me.”

“Is it worth a few more
hours?” MacFarland asked.
“You want to work on the star-
ship. You know you meant it
when you told me you want a
chance to be on the ship. It’s the
biggest opportunity offered any
group of scientists in history.
And you admit you can’t give in
to this coercion without hurting
your own self interest. So why
not give me until dawn? There’s
another plane at six a.m. give me
till then.”

“What can you do?” Doctor
Warren asked.

“I can challenge them to a
duel. They won’t refuse. No one
ever refuses a duel.”

A LL night the two sides har-
-E* assed each other. Crawford
Bell’s technicians went up and
down the enemy line, waking up
any Belderkan who was sleeping
on his feet. Sirens wailed. The
crowd pleaded with the scientists,

THE WARRIORS

insulted the invaders and sang
to itself. The girls, not yet battle
fatigued, tried to tempt the Bel-
derkan troops. The helicopters
continued their sermons and de-
nunciations.

MacFarland tried to sleep on a
cot beside the command car.
Crawford Bell gave him a mild
sedative but it didn’t do much
good.

“Have you ever fought a
duel?” Crawford Bell asked.

“No. This is only my third
raid.”

“What’s happened up to now is
a boys game compared to that.
That’s for real.”

“You don’t have to tell me. It
makes me sick to think about it.”

“You don’t have to do it. It’s
something no government can
ask you ;o do.”

“No, but the UN Secretariat
approves of it and every honest
psychologist approves of it, too.
Let me rest. You get the junk
ready.”

He wondered if anything was
worth a duel. The star ship was-
n’t. His career wasn’t. So why
bother? But he knew the answer
and so did every soldier on the
planet. Every duel fought made
killing a little less likely; every
duel decreased the danger mod-
ern knowledge, which hadn’t
been destroyed with the weapons
it had made possible, would wipe
out human life. It wasn’t some-
thing you did for your own coun-

try. You did it for the whole hu-
man race and all the generations
to come.

At five he arose from his cot.
He felt groggy but that couldn’t
be helped.

In the chilly dawn he took off
his jacket and shirt. .Bare chest-
ed, he stepped into the space be-
tween his vehicles and the enemy
line.

Crawford Bell handed him a
public address system. “Good
morning,” his voice boomed. “I
hope you’ve had a better sleep
than I got. It’s easy to be brave
when you know your opponent
won’t kill you. It’s easy to stand
in line and look heroic and pa-
triotic when you know I don’t
dare run you over with my vehi-
cles. But how brave are you? Are
you really willing to suffer for
your country ? I think the men of
Belderkan are cowards. I think
you would still be running if we
had fought an old fashioned war
last night.”

TTE paused and stroked his
mustache. Then he gestured
and Crawford Bell rolled the in-
strument forward. It was a pole
on a wheeled platform. Four han-
dles stuck out from the pole;
above each handle was a set of
four dials.

“Do you know what a duel is ?”
He made himself look at the in-
strument. “Have you heard in
this primitive country of the

AMAZING STORIES

great duels fought all over the
world these last few years ? Have
you heard of the champions pro-
duced by nations like Ghana, Is-
rael, Costa Rica? Wouldn’t you
like to pretend you haven’t?”

The youth he had tried to
tempt the night before stepped
out of the line. “I accept your
challenge.”

He doesn’t know what he’s do-
ing, MacFarland thought. “We-
’ve got room for four at the pole.
Who else accepts my challenge?”

Another man stepped forward.
“I’m not afraid. I’ll die if I have
to.”

The struggle on the faces of
the men left in line was painful
to watch. Three of them stepped
forward at the same time. They
looked at each other until, with a
puzzled expression on his face,
one of them waved the other two
back.

MacFarland stepped up to the
pole and grabbed a handle. Try-
ing hard to keep their faces
blank, the three Belderkans
grabbed the other handles. One
of them trembled.

Behind him the crowd mur-
mured. He squeezed the handle.
Pain shot up his arms and thud-
ded through his body. His eyes
closed. His face twisted. Holding
back a scream, he made himself
open his eyes and watch the dials
over his handle. The dial marked
by a red light was his. The other
dials told him how much pain his

opponents were enduring. Each
man could end his agony by re-
leasing his handle. Each man
squeezed harder. Even as they
screamed, they squeezed and
made the needle move a little fur-
ther right.

No job, no promotion, no sci-
entific enterprise or national
need, could have made him do
this. Feeling the pain hammer
through his bones, he knew how
weak all those motivations were.

Through slitted eyelids he saw
two of his opponents fall away
from the post. His dial said he
was enduring more than either
of them.

H E turned his face toward the
other man. Clenching their
handles, they grimaced at each
other. MacFarland’s grip tight-
ened. His needle moved. The oth-
er needle edged past it. They
hung there moaning and shak-
ing.

Oh God, he thought. Oh God.
He made himself squeeze.

Twin shrieks cut the air. Both
men released their handles and
fell away from the pole. MacFar-
land staggered in circles, bent
over, clutching his stomach, try-
ing to turn off the pain.

“Are you all right?” Crawford
Bell asked.

“Look after him,” he an-
swered, still fighting the duel.

“Look after him,” he heard
the other man moan.

THE WARRIORS

Hands grabbed him and he
straightened up. When he saw
the pole, he flinched. He couldn’t
do that again.

He grabbed the mike. “You
saw that,” he mumbled. “Who’s
next? Who wants to do that
next?”

An aging man walked out of
the line and took his position at
the pole.

MacFarland stared at the old
man’s disciplined face. He had
been thinking no one would dare
come forward now that they had
seen a duel. The old man looked
tougher than any of the last
group.

He stepped up to the pole and
grabbed a handle.

“Relax,” the Belderkan said.
“This time you’ll lose or the good
thing will happen, but whichever
it is, this will be the last time.
Good luck.”

Have you done this before?
Farland squeezed to equal him.
The old man squeezed his handle
and his needle jumped a quarter
of the way across the dial. Mac-
Farland squeezed to equal him.
Again pain hammered his bones.
Again his face twisted and he
moaned over his tortured body.

But it was necessary. It had to
be done. This odd form of duel-
ling had started twenty years be-
fore, when two groups of non-
violent soldiers faced each other
in the streets of Rio and tension
mounted on both sides. Neither

side could accept defeat. Neither
side could return home and ad-
mit it had surrendered to un-
armed men because it lacked pa-
tience. In wars fought with vio-
lence, men could lose with honor.
There was no honor for the loser
in a non-violent battle.

Then a man had slashed his
wrists and let his blood drip on-
to the street. “I’ll die before I’ll
leave here,” he had said.

“I’ll die before I’ll give in to
you,” a man from the opposing
group had said, slashing his own
wrists.

According to the UN psycholo-
gists who had studied the phe-
nomenon, duelling was a form of
therapy for the people of the
world, a necessary transition
from the days when men had
earned their manhood by fighting
wars or belonging to groups
which could be proud of their
warriors. The pride of nations de-
manded some sacrifice.

T HE needle was halfway around
the dial., Still the old man
hung on. MacFarland squeezed
harder. He was staying ahead.
How much could he take? Why
didn’t he die of shock? He hoped
for that release and fought to
keep conscious and endure a little
more.

His personal pride, the good of
his country, and the safety of
the world, demanded that he
drive the contest beyond the limit

AMAZING STORIES

of his endui-anee; that he lose, if
he lost, not because he had been
afraid but because his flesh could
endure no moi'e. ^

He screamed and moaned and
squeezed. The men in the enemy
line moaned with him. He heard
Ci'awford Bell shouting to him to
let go. Was that Doctor Umbana
he -heard? Wasn’t that the calm
Doctor Warren shouting and
pleading ?

And the strangest of all sounds
was his own voice mingling with
the voice of his opponent, two
screams with exactly the same
pitch and intensity, the same rise
and fall.

He was going to die. He would-
n’t be the first. Sometimes the
honor of the nation demanded
that and it was necessary nations
not be shamed by their citizens.
Shamed nations were dangerous
nations. And after all, he was
only one soldier and in previous
generations the sacrifice had
been millions.

TTE lay on the cot. Crawford
Bell and a medic worked on
him with hypos. Vaguely, he real-

T H E

ized the aging Beldei'kan lay be-
side him.

“It’s about time you opened
your eyes,” Crawford Bell said.
“Can you hear me?”

He nodded.

“We put you into therapeutic
shock. You’ve been out an hour.
You’ll be all right.”

“How’s my friend there?”

“He’s coming around.”

A jet screamed. Lifting his
head, he watched it rise into the
morning.

“Doctor Warren’s on it,” Ci'aw-
ford Bell said. “So’s Doctor Um-
bana. The Belderkans agreed to
let any two of them through the
line and Doctor Warren decided
he didn’t need all the rest of
them after all. Your technique
of persuasion isn’t one I’d like to
use, but it’s effective.”

He didn’t have the strength to
answer. It always worked out
that way. After a duel, what had
seemed beyond compromise sud-
denly became negotiable. That
was the good thing the old man
had spoken of. That was the
knowledge which had given him
that strength to endure.

END

Through Time and Space With Benedict Breadfruit: IV

B UT what will they do with the robot when it becomes too decrepit
to move?” persisted the boy.

Breadfi'uit pointed to a large vat of bubbling acid in the public
square. “They’ll thi'ow him in the pool, yonder, son.”

— GRANDALL BARRETTON

Don't know where to go on your vacation? Here are
some excellent suggestions. You can link up for two
weeks with the mercury thought-pools of Kish. Or
attend an endocrine-gala with the latest Aphrodite
of Venus. Or, if you have lots of time, you can take out a . . .

PASSPORT TO

ETERNITY By J. G. BALLARD

I T was half past love on New
Day in Zenith and the clocks
were striking heaven. All over
the city the sounds of revelry
echoed upwards into the daz-
zling Martian night, but high on
Sunset Ridge, among the man-
sions of the rich, Margot and
Clifford Gorrell faced each other
in glum silence.

Frowning, Margot flipped im-
patiently through the vacation
brochure on her lap, then tossed
it away with an elaborate ges-
ture of despair.

“But Clifford, why do we have
to go to the same place every
summer? I’d like to do some-
thing interesting for a change.
This year the Lovatts are going
to the Venus Fashion Festival,
and Bobo and Peter Anders have
just booked into the fire beaches

at Saturn. They’ll all have a
wonderful time, while we’re qui-
etly taking the last boat to no-
where.”

Clifford Gorrell nodded im-
passively, one hand cupped over
the sound control in the arm of
his chair. They had been arguing
all evening, and Margot’s voice
threw vivid sparks of irritation
across the walls and ceiling.
Grey and mottled, they would
take days to drain.

“I’m sorry you feel like that,
Margot. Where would you like to
go?”

Margot shrugged scornfully,
staring out at the corona of a
million neon signs that illumi-
nated the city below. “Does it
matter?”

“Of course. You arrange the
vacation this time.”

Margot hesitated, one eye
keenly on her husband. Then she
sat forward happily, turning up
her fluorescent violet dress until
she glowed like an Algolian ray-
fish.

C LIFFORD, I’ve got a wonder-
ful idea! Yesterday I was
down in the Colonial Bazaar,
thinking about our holiday, when
I found a small dream bureau
that’s just been opened. Some-
thing like the Dream Dromes in
Neptune City everyone was
crazy about two or three years
ago, but instead of having to
plug into whatever program
happens to be going you have
your own dream plays specially
designed for you.”

Clifford continued to nod,
carefully increasing the volume
of the sound-sweeper.

“They have their own studios
and send along a team of ana-
lysts and writers to interview us
and afterwards book a sanato-
rium anywhere we like for the
convalescence. Eve Corbusier
and I decided a small party of
five or six would be best.”

“Eve Corbusier,” Clifford re-
peated. He smiled thinly to him-
self and switched on the book he
had been reading. “I wondered
when that gorgon was going to
appear.”

“Eve isn’t too bad when you
get to know her, darling,” Mar-
got told him. “Don’t start read-

ing yet. She’ll think up all sorts
of weird ideas for the play.” Her
voice trailed off. “What’s the
matter?”

“Nothing,” Clifford said wear-
ily. “It’s just that I sometimes
wonder if you have any sense of
responsibility at all.” As Mar-
got’s eyes darkened he went on.
“Do you really think that I, a su-
preme court justice, could take
that sort of vacation, even if I
wanted to? Those dream plays
are packed with advertising
commercials and all sort of cor-
rupt material.” He shook his
head sadly. “And I told you not
to go into the Colonial Bazaar.”

“What are we going to do
then ?” Margot asked coldly.
“Another honey Moon?”

“I’ll reserve a couple of sin-
gles tomorrow. Don’t worry, you-
’ll enjoy it.” He clipped the hand
microphone into his book and be-
gan to scan the pages with it,
listening to the small metallic
voice.

Margot stood up, the vanes in
her hat quivering furiously.
“Clifford!” $he snapped, her
voice dead and menacing. “I
warn you, I’m not going on an-
other honeyMoon!”

Absently, Clifford said: “Of
course, dear,” his fingers racing
over the volume control.
“Clifford!”

Her shout sank to an angry
squeak. She stepped over to him,
her dress blazing like a dragon.

AMAZING STORIES

jabbering at him noiselessly, the
sounds sucked away through the
vents over her head and pumped
out across the echoing rooftops
of the midnight city.

AS he sat back quietly in his
private vacuum, the ceiling
shaking occasionally when Mar-
got slammed a door upstairs,
Clifford looked out over the bril-
liant diadem of down-town Ze-
nith. In the distance, by the
space-port, the ascending arcs of
hyperliners flared across the sky
while below the countless phos-
phorescent trajectories of hop-
cabs enclosed the bowl of roof-
light in a dome of glistening
hoops.

Of all the cities of the galaxy,
few offered such a wealth of
pleasures as Zenith, but to Clif-
ford Gorrell it was as distant
and unknown as the first Gomor-
rah. At 35 he was a thin-faced,
prematurely aging man with re-
ceding hair and a remote ab-
stracted expression, and in the
dark sombre suit and stiff white
dog-collar which were the tradi-
tional uniform of the Probate
Department’s senior administra-
tors he looked like a man who
had never taken a holiday in his
life.

At that moment Clifford
wished he hadn’t. He and Margot
had never been able to agree
about their vacations. Clifford’s
associates and superiors at the

Department, all of them ten or
twenty years older than himself,
took their pleasures conserva-
tively and expected a young but
responsible justice to do the
same. Margot grudgingly ac-
knowledged this, but her friends
who frequented the chic play-
time clinics along the beach at
Mira Mira considered the so-
called honey Moon trips back to
Earth derisively old-fashioned a
last desperate resort of the aged
and infirmed.

And to tell the truth, Clifford
realized, they were right. He had
never dared to admit to Margot
that he too was bored because it
would have been more than his
peace of mind was worth, but a
change might do them good.

He resolved — next year.

M ARGOT lay back among the
cushions on the terrace di-
van, listening to the flamingo
trees singing to each other in the
morning sunlight. Twenty feet
below, in the high-walled gar-
den, a tall muscular young man
was playing with a jet-ball. He
had a dark olive complexion and
swarthy good looks, and oil
gleamed across his bare chest
and arms. Margot watched with
malicious amusement his efforts
to entertain her. This was Tran-
tino, Margot’s play-boy, who
chaperoned her during Clifford’s
long absences at the Probate
Department.

PASSPORT TO ETERNITY

“Hey, Margot! Catch!” He
gestured with the jet-ball but
Margot turned away, feeling her
swim-suit slide pleasantly across
her smooth tanned skin. The suit
was made of one of the newer
bioplastic materials, and its liv-
ing tissues were still growing,
softly adapting themselves to
the contours of her body, repair-
ing themselves as the fibres be-
came worn or grimy. Upstairs in
her wardrobes the gowns and
dresses purred on their hangars
like the drowsing inmates of
some exquisite arboreal zoo.
Sometimes she thought of com-
missioning her little Mercurian
tailor to run up a bioplastic suit
for Clifford — a specially de-
signed suit that would begin to
constrict one night as he stood
on the terrace, the lapels grow-
ing tighter and tighter around
his neck, the sleeves pinning his
arms to his sides, the waist con-
tracting to pitch him over —
“Margot!” Trantino inter-
rupted her reverie, sailed the
jet-ball expertly through the air
towards her. Annoyed, Margot
caught it with one hand and
pointed it away, watched it sail
over the wall and the roofs be-
yond.

T RANTINO came up to her.

“What’s the matter?” he
asked anxiously. For his part he
felt his inability to soothe Mar-
got a reflection on his profession-

al skill. The privileges of his
caste had to be guarded, jealous-
ly. For several centuries . now the
managerial and technocr-atic elite
had been so preoccupied with the
work of government thatt they re-
lied on the Templars orf Aphro-
dite not merely to guard their
wives from any maraudiing suit-
ors but also to keep them
amused and contented. By defini-
tion, of course, their relationship
was platonic, a pleasarut revival
of the old chivalrous icHeals, but
sometimes Trantino rregretted
that the only tools in hi s armory
were a handful of pcxems and
empty romantic gestu res. The
Guild of which he Was a novitiate
member was an ancient and hon-
ored one, and it wouldn’t do if
Margot began to pine and Mr.
Gorrell reported him to the Mas-
ters of the Guild.

“Why are you always arguing
with Mr. Gorrell?” Trantino
asked her. One of thje Guild’s
axioms was ‘The husbsand is al-
ways right’. Any discord be-
tween him and his wif-e was the
responsibility of the pllay-boy.

Margot ignored TTrantino’s
question. “Those treesj are get-
ting on my nerves,” she com-
plained fractiously. “Why can’t
they keep quiet?”

“They’re mating,” Trantino
told her. He added thomghtfully:
“You should sing to Mm. Gorrell.”

Margot stirred lazi ly as the
shoulder straps of th«e sun-suit

AMAZING STORIES

unclasped themselves behind her
back. “Tino,” she asked, “what’s
the most unpleasant thing I
could do to Mr. Gorrell?”

“Margot!” Trantino gasped,
utterly shocked. He decided that
an appeal to sentiment, a method
of reconciliation despised by the
more proficient members of the
Guild, was his only hope. “Re-
member, Margot, you will always
have me.”

He was about to permit himself
a melancholy smile when Margot
sat up abruptly.

“Don’t look so frightened, you
fool! I’ve just got an idea that
should make Mr. Gorrell sing to
me.”

She straightened the vanes in
her hat, waited for the sun-suit
to clasp itself discreetly around
her, then pushed Trantino aside
and stalked off the terrace.

C LIFFORD was browsing
among the spools in the li-
brary, quietly listening to an old
22nd Century abstract on sys-
tems of land tenure in the Tri-
anguli.

“Hello, Margot, feel better
now ?”

Margot smiled at him coyly.
“Clifford, I’m ashamed of myself.
Do forgive me.” She bent down
and nuzzled his ear. “Sometimes
I’m very selfish. Have you booked
our tickets yet?”

Clifford disengaged her arm
and straightened his collar. “I

called the agency, but their book-
ings have been pretty heavy.
They’ve got a double but no sin-
gles. We’ll have to wait a few
days.”

“No, we won’t,” Margot ex-
claimed brightly. “Clifford, why
don’t you and I take the double?
Then we can really be together,
forget all that ’ ship-board non-
sense about never having met be-
fore.”

Puzzled, Clifford switched off
the player. “What do you mean?”

Margot explained. “Look, Clif-
ford, I’ve been thinking that I
ought to spend more time with
you than I do at present, really
share your work and hobbies. I’m
tired of all these play-boys.” She
drooped languidly against Clif-
ford, her voice silky and reassur-
ing. “I want to be with you, Clif-
ford. Always.”

Clifford pushed her away.
“Don’t be silly, Margot,” he said
with an anxious laugh. “You’re
being absurd.”

“No, I’m not. After all, Harold
Kharkov and his wife haven’t got
a play-boy and she’s very happy.”

Maybe she is, Clifford thought,
beginning to panic. Kharkov had
once been the powerful and ruth-
less director of the Department
of Justice, now was a third-rate
attorney hopelessly trying to eke
out a meagre living on the open
market, dominated by his wife
and forced to spend virtually 24
hours a day with her. For a mo-

PASSPORT TO ETERNITY

ment Clifford thought of the
days when he had courted Mar-
got, of the long dreadful hours
listening to her inane chatter.
Trantino’s real role was not to
chaperone Margot while Clifford
was away but while he was at
home.

‘‘Margot, be sensible,” he
started to say, but she cut him
short. “I’ve made up my mind,
I’m going to tell Trantino to
pack his suitcase and go back to
the Guild.” She switched on the
spool player, selecting the wrong
speed, smiling ecstatically as the
reading head grated loudly and
stripped the coding off the rec-
ord. “It’s going to be wonderful
to share everything with you.
Why don’t we forget about the
vacation this year?”

A facial tic from which Clif-
ford had last suffered at the age
of ten began to twitch ominously.

'T'ONY Harcourt, Clifford’s per-

sonal assistant, came over to
the Gorrell’s villa immediately
after lunch. He was a brisk, pol-
ished young man, barely control-
ling his annoyance at being
called back to work on the first
day of his vacation. He had care-
fully booked a sleeper next to
Dolores Costane, the most beau-
tiful of the Jovian Heresiarch’s
vestals, on board a leisure-liner
leaving that afternoon for Venus,
but instead of enjoying the fruits
of weeks of blackmail and in-

trigue he was having to take part
in what seemed a quite uncharac-
teristic piece of Gorrell whimsy.

He listened in growing be-
wilderment as Clifford explained.

“We were going to one of our
usual resorts on Luna, Tony, but
we’ve decided we need a change.
Margot wants a vacation that’s
different. Something new, excit-
ing, original. So go round all the
agencies and bring me their sug-
gestions.”

“All the agencies?” Tony que-
ried. “Don’t you mean just the
registered ones?”

“All of them,” Margot told him
smugly, relishing every moment
of her triumph.

Clifford nodded, and smiled at
Margot benignly.

“But there must be 50 or 60
agencies organizing vacations*”
Tony protested. “Only about a
dozen of them are accredited.
Outside Empyrean Tours and
Union-Galactic there’ll be abso-
lutely nothing suitable for you.”

“Never mind,” Clifford said
blandly. “We only want an idea
of the field. I’m sorry, Tony, but
I don’t want this all over the De-
partment and I know you’ll be
discreet.”

Tony groaned. “It’ll take me
weeks.”

“Three days,” Clifford told
him. “Margot and I want to leave
here by the end of the week.” He
looked longingly over his shoul-
der for the absent Trantino. “Be-

AMAZING STORIES

lieve me, Tony, we really need a
holiday.”

F IFTY-SIX travel and vacation
agencies were listed in the
Commercial Directory, Tony dis-
covered when he returned to his
office in the top floor of the Jus-
tice building in down-town Ze-
nith, all but eight of them alien.
The Department had initiated le-
gal proceedings against five,
three had closed down, and eight
more were fronts for other en-
terprises.

That left him with forty to
visit, spread all over the Upper
and Lower Cities and in the Colo-
nial Bazaar, attached to various
mercantile, l-eligious and para-
military organizations, some of
them huge concerns with their
own police and ecclesiastical
forces, others sharing a one-
room office and transceiver with
a couple of other shoestring
firms.

Tony mapped out an itinerary,
slipped a flask of Five-Anchor
Neptunian Rum into his hip
pocket and dialled a helicab.

The first was arco produc-
tions INC., a large establish-
ment occupying three levels and
a bunker on the fashionable west
side of the Upper City. Accord-
ing to the Directory they special-
ized in hunting and shooting ex-
peditions.

The helicab put him down on
the apron outside the entrance.

Massive steel columns reached up
to a reinforced concrete portico,
and the whole place looked less
like a travel agency than the last
redoubt of some interstellar Seig-
freid. As he went in a smart
jackbooted guard of janissaries
in black and silver uniforms
snapped to attention and pre-
sented arms.

Everyone inside the building
was wearing a uniform, moving
about busily at standby alert. A
huge broad-shouldered woman
with sergeant’s stripes handed
Tony over to a hard-faced Mar-
tian colonel.

I ’M making some inquiries on
behalf of a wealthy Terran
and his wife,” Tony explained.
“They thought they’d do a little
big-game hunting on their vaca-
tion this year. I believe you or-
ganize expeditions.”

The colonel nodded curtly and
led Tony over to a broad map-
table. “Certainly. What exactly
have they in mind?”

“Well, nothing really. They
hoped you’d make some sugges-
tions.”

“Of course.” The colonel pulled
out a memo-tape. “Have they
their own air and land forces?”

Tony shook his head. “I’m
afraid not.”

“I see. Can you tell me whether
they will require a single army
corps, a combined task force

_ ft

or —

PASSPORT TO ETERNITY

“No," Tony said. “Nothing as
big as that.”

“An assault party of brigade
strength? I understand. Quieter
and less elaborate. All the fash-
ion today.” He switched on the
star-map and spread his hands
across the glimmering screen of
stars and nebulae. “Now the
question of the particular thea-
tre. At present only three of the
game reserves have open seasons.
Firstly the Procyon system ; this
includes about 20 different races,
some of them still with only
atomic technologies. Unfortu-
nately there’s been a good deal of
dispute recently about declaring
Procyon a game reserve, and the
Resident of Alschain is trying to
have it admitted to the Pan-
Galactic Conference. A pity, I
feel,” the colonel added, reflec-
tively stroking his steel-grey
moustache. “Procyon always put
up a great fight against us and
an expedition there was invari-
ably lively.”

Tony nodded sympathetically.
“I hadn’t realized they object-
ed.”

The colonel glanced at him
sharply. “Naturally,” he said. He
cleared his throat. “That leaves
only the Ketab tribes of Ursa
Major, who are having their Mil-
lennial Wars, and the Sudor Mar-
tines of Orion. They are an en-
tirely new reserve, and your best
choice without doubt. The ruling
dynasty died out recently, and a

war of succession could be con-
veniently arranged.”

T ONY was no longer following
the colonel, but he smiled in-
telligently.

“Now,” the colonel asked,
“what political or spiritual
creeds do your friends wish to
have invoked?”

Tony frowned. “I don’t think
they want any. Are they abso-
lutely necessary?”

The colonel regarded Tony
carefully. “No,” he said slowly.
“It’s a question of taste. A purely
military operation is perfectly
feasible. However, we always ad-
vise our clients to invoke some
doctrine as a casus belli, not only
to avoid adverse publicity and
any feelings of guilt or remorse,
but to lend color and purpose to
the campaign. Each of our field
commanders specializes in a par-
ticular ideological pogrom, with
the exception of General Wester-
ling. Perhaps your friends would
prefer him?”

Tony’s ,mind started to work
again. “Schapiro Westerling?
The former Director-General of
Graves Commission?”

The colonel nodded. “You know
him?”

Tony laughed. “Know him? I
thought I was prosecuting him
at the current Nova Trials. I can
see that we’re well behind with
the times.” He pushed back his
chair. “To tell the truth I don’t

AMAZING STORIES

think you’ve anything suitable
for my friends. Thanks all the
same.”

The colonel stiffened. One of
his hands moved below the desk
and a buzzer sounded along the
wall.

“However,” Tony added, “I’d
be grateful if you’d send them
further details.”

The colonel sat impassively in
his chair. Three enormous
guards appeared at Tony’s elbow,
idly swinging energy trun-
cheons.

“Clifford Gorrell, Stellar Pro-
bate Division, Department of
Justice,” Tony said quickly.

He gave the colonel a brief
smile and made his way out,
cursing Clifford and walking
warily across the thickly-piled
carpet in case it had been mined.

T HE next one on his list was
the A-Z JOLLY JUBILEE COM-
PANY, alien and unregistered,
head office somewhere out of Bet-
elgeuse. According to the Direc-
tory they specialized in ‘all-in
cultural parties and guaranteed
somatic weekends.’ Their prem-
ises occupied the top two tiers of
a hanging garden in the Colonial
Bazaar. They sounded harmless
enough but Tony was ready for
them.

“No,” he said firmly to a lovely
Antarean wraith-fern who shyly
raised a frond to him as he
crossed the terrace. “Not today.”

Behind the bar a fat. man in
an asbestos suit was feeding
sand to a siliconic fire-fish swim-
ming round in a pressure bra-
zier.

“Damn things,” he grumbled,
wiping the sweat off his chin and
fiddling aimlessly with the ther-
mostat. “They gave me a booklet
when I got it, but it doesn’t say
anything about it eating a whole
beach every day.” He spaded in
another couple of shovels from a
low dune of sand heaped on the
floor behind him. “You have to
keep them at exactly 5750°K. or
they start getting nervous. Can
I help you?”

“I thought there was a vaca-
tion agency here,” Tony said.

“Sure. I’ll call the girls for
you.” He pressed a bell.

“Wait a minute,” Tony cut in.
“You advertise something about
cultural parties. What exactly
are they?”

The fat man chuckled. “That
must be my partner. He’s a pro-
fessor at Vega Tech. Likes to
keep the tone up.” He winked at
Tony.

Tony sat on one of the stools,
looking out over the crazy spiral
roof-tops of the Bazaar. A mile
away the police patrols circled
oven the big apartment batteries
which marked the perimeter of
the Bazaar, keeping their dis-
tance.

A tall slim woman appeared
from behind the foliage and

PASSPORT TO ETERNITY

sauntered across the terrace to
him. She was a Canopan slave,
hot-housed out of imported germ,
a slender green-skinned beauty
with moth-like fluttering gills.

The fat man introduced Tony.
“Lucille, take him up to the ar-
bour and give him a run
through.”

Tony tried to protest but the
pressure brazier was hissing
fiercely. The fat man started
feeding sand in furiously, the
exhaust flames flaring across the
terrace.

Quickly, Tony turned and
backed up the stairway to the
arbour. “Lucille,” he reminded
her firmly, “this is strictly cul-
tural, remember.”

H ALF an hour later a dull
boom reverberated up from
the terrace.

"Poor Jumbo,” Lucille said
sadly as a fine rain of sand came
down over them.

“Poor Jumbo,” Tony agreed,
sitting back and playing with a
coil of her hair. Like a soft sinu-
ous snake, it circled around his
arm, sleek with blue oil. He
drained the flask of Five-Anchor
and tossed it lightly over the
balustrade. “Now tell me more
about these Canopan prayer-
beds. . .

W HEN, after two days, Tony
reported back to the Gorrells
he looked hollow-eyed and ex-

hausted, like a man who had been
brain-w'ashed by the Wardens.

“What happened to you?”
Margot asked anxiously, “we
thought you’d been going round
the agencies.”

“Exactly,” Tony said. He
slumped down in a sofa and
tossed a thick folder across to
Clifford. “Take your pick. You-
’ve got about 250 schemes there
in complete detail, but I’ve writ-
ten out a synopsis which gives
one or two principal suggestions
from each agency. Most of them
are out of the question.”

Clifford unclipped the snyopsis
and started to read through it.

(1) arco productions inc. Un-
registered. Private subsidi-
ary of Sagittarius Security
Police.

Hunting and shooting. Your
own w T ar to order. Raiding par-
ties, revolutions, religious cru-
sades. In anything from a small
commando squad to a 3,000-ship
armada, arco provide publicity,
mock War Crimes Tribunal, etc.
Samples :

(a) Operation Torquemada.
23-day expedition to Bellatrix IV.
20-ship assault corps under Ad-
miral Storm Wengen. Mission:
liberation of (imaginary) Ter-
ran hostages. Cost : 300,000 cred-
its.

(b) Operation Klingsor 15-
year crusade against Ursa Ma-
jor. Combined task foi-ce of 2,500

AMAZING STORIES

ships. Mission : recovery of runic
memory dials stolen from client’s
shrine.

Cost: 500 billion credits (arco
will arrange lend-lease but this
is dabbling in realpolitik) .

(2) ARENA FEATURES inc. Unreg-
istered. Organizers of the
Pan-Galactic Tournament
held tri-millennially at the
Sun Bowl, 2-Heliopolis,
NGC 3599.

Every conceivable, game in the
Cosmos is played at the tourna-
ment and so formidable is the
opposition that a winning con-
testant can virtually choose his
own apotheosis. The challenge
round of the Solar Megathlon,
Group 3 (that is, for any being
whose function can be described,
however loosely, as living) in-
volves Quantum Jumping, 7-di-
mentional Maze Ball and Psycho-
kinetic Bridge (pretty tricky
against a telepathic Ketos
D’Oma) . The only Terran ever to
win an event was the redoubtable
Chippy Yerkes Of Altair 5 The
Clowns, who introduced the un-
playable blank Round Dice. Be-
ing a spectator is as exhausting
as being a contestant, and you’re
well advised to substitute.

Cost: 100,000 credits/day.

(3) AGENCE GENERALE DE TOUR-
isme. Registered. Venus.

Concessionaires for the Colony
Beatific on Lake Virgo, the Man-

drake Casino Circuit and the
Miramar-Trauma Senso-chan-
nels. Dream-baths, vu-dromes,
endocrine-galas. Darleen Costel-
lo is the current Aphrodite and
Laurence Mandell makes a versa-
tile Lothario. Plug into these two
from 30:30 VST. Room and non-
denominational bath at the Go-
morrah-Plaza on Mount Venus
comes to 1,000 credits a day, but
remember to keep out of the
Zone. It’s just too erotogenous
for a Terran.

(4) terminal tours ltd. Un-
registered. Earth.

For those who want to get
away from it all the Dream of
Osiris, an astral-rigged, 1,000-
foot leisure-liner is now fitting
out for the Grand Tour. Round-
cosmos cruise, visiting every
known race and galaxy.

Cost: Doubles at a flat billion,
but it’s cheap when you realize
that the cruise lasts for ever and
you’ll never be back.

(5) sleep traders. Unregis-
tered.

A somewhat shadowy group
who handle all dealings on the
Blue Market, acting as a general
clearing house and buying and
selling dreams all through the
Galaxy.

Sample: Like to try a really
new sort of dream? The Set Cor-
rani Priests of Theta Piscium
will link you up with the sacred

PASSPORT TO ETERNITY

electronic thought-pools in the
Desert of Kish. These mercury
lakes are their ancesti-al memory
banks. Surgery is necessary but
be careful. Too much cortical
damage and the archetypes may
get restive. In return one of the
Set Corrani (polysexual delta-
humanoids about the size of a
walking dragline) will take over
your cerebral functions for a
long weekend. All these transac-
tions are done on an exchange
basis and sleep traders charge
nothing for the service. But they
obviously get a rake-off, and may
pump advertising into the lower
medullary centres. Whatever
they’re selling I wouldn’t advise
anybody to buy.

(6) THE AGENCY. Registered.

M33 in Andromeda.

The executive authority of the
consortium of banking trusts
floating Schedule D, the fourth
draw of the gigantic PK pyramid
lottery sweeping all through the
continuum from Sol III out to
the island universes. Trance-cells
everywhere are now recruiting
dream-readers and ESPercep-
tionists, and there’s still time to
buy a ticket. There’s only one
number on all the tickets — the
winning one — but don’t think
that means you’ll get away with
the kitty. THE agency has just
launched uniliv, the emergency
relief fund for victims of Sched-
ule C who lost their deposits and

are now committed to paying off
impossible debts, some monetary,
some moral (if you’re unlucky in
the dx-aw you may find yourself
landed with a guilt complex that
would make even a Colonus Rex
look sad.)

Cost: 1 cx-edit — but with an
evaluation in the billions if you
have to forfeit.

(7) arcturian express. Unreg-
istered.

Controls all important track
events. The l’acing calendar this
year is a causal and not a tem-
poral one and seems a little ob-
scure, but most of the estab-
lished classics ai'e taking place.

(a) The Rhinosaur Derby.
Held this year at Betelgeuse
Springs under the rules of the
Federation of Amoi-phs. Fix*st to
the light horizon. There’s always
quite a line-up for this one and
any form of vehicle is allowed —
rockets, beams, racial migra-
tions, ES thought patterns — but
frankly it’s a waste of effort. It’s
not just that by the time you’re
out of your own sight you’re usu-
ally out of your mind as well, but
the Nils of Rigel, who always en-
ter a strong team, are capable of
instantaneous ti'ansmission.

(b) The Paraplegic Handicap
Recently instituted by the Pro-
tists of Lambda Scox-pio. The
course measures only 0.00015
mm., but that’s a long way to
urge an Aldebai-an Toi'pid. They

AMAZING STORIES

are giant viruses embedded in
bauxite mountains, and by vary-
ing their pressure differentials
it’s sometimes possible to tickle
them into a little life. K 2 on
Regulus IX is holding the big
bets, but even so the race is esti-
mated to take about 50,000 years
to run.

(8) NEW FUTURES INC. Unregis-
tered.

Tired of the same dull round?
NEW FUTURES will take you right
out of this world. In the island
universes the continuum is ex-
tra-dimensional, and the time
channels are controlled by rival
cartels. The element of chance
apparently plays the time role,
and it’s all even more confused
by the fact that you may be mov-
ing around in someone else’s
extrapolation.

In the tourist translation man-
ual 185 basic tenses are given,
and of these 125 are future con-
ditional. No verb conjugates in
the present tense, and you can
invent and copyright your own
irregulars. This may explain why
I got the impression at the bu-
reau that they were only half
there.

Cost: simultaneously 3, 270
and 2,000,000 credits. They re-
fuse to quibble.

(9) seven sirens. Registered.
Venus.

A subsidiary of the fashion

trust controlling senso-channel
Astral Eve.

Ladies, like to win your own
beauty contest? Twenty-five of
the most beautiful creatures in
the Galaxy are waiting to pit
their charms against yours, but
however divine they may be —
and two or three of them, such
as the Flamen Zilla QuelQueen
(75-9-25) and the Orthodox
Virgin of Altair (76-953-?) cer-
tainly will be — they’ll stand no
chance against you. Your speci-
fications will be defined as the
ideal ones.

(10) GENERAL ENTERPRISES INC.

Registered.

Specialists in culture cycles,
world struggles, ethnic trends.
Organize vacations as a sideline.
A vast undertaking for whom ul-
timately we all work. Their next
venture, epoch-making by all ac-
counts, is starting now, and ev-
erybody will be coming along. I
was politely but firmly informed
that it was no use worrying
about the cost. When I asked —

B EFORE Clifford could finish
one of the houseboys came up
to him.

“Priority Call for you, sir.”
Clifford handed the synopsis to
Margot. “Tell me if you find any-
thing. It looks to me as if we’ve
been wasting Tony’s time.”

He left them and went through
to his study.

PASSPORT TO ETERNITY

“Ah, Gorrell, there you are.”
It was Thormvall Harrison, the
attorney who had taken over
Clifford’s office. “Who the hell
are all these people trailing in to
see you night and day? The place
looks like Colonial Night at the
Arena Circus. I can’t get rid of
them.”

“Which people?” Clifford
asked. “What do they want ?”

“You, apparently,” Thornwall
told him. “Most of them thought
I was you. They’ve been trying
to sell me all sorts of crazy vaca-
tion schemes. I said you’d al-
ready gone on your vacation and
I myself never took one. Then
one of them pulled a hypodermic
on me. There’s even an Anti-
Cartel agent sleuthing around,
wants to see you about block
bookings. Thinks you’re a racke-
teer.”

B ACK in the lounge Margot
and Tony were looking out
through the terrace windows in-
to the boulevard which ran from
the Gorrell’s villa to the level be-
low.

A long column of vehicles had
pulled up under the trees : trucks,
half-tracks, huge Telesenso stu-
dio location vans and several
sleek white ambulances. The
drivers and crew-men were
standing about in little groups in
the shadows, quietly watching
the villa. Two or three radar
scanners on the vans were rotat-

ing, and as Clifford looked down
a convoy of trucks drove up and
joined the tail of the column.

“Looks like there’s going to be
quite a party,” Tony said. “'What
are they waiting for ?”

“Perhaps they’ve come for
us?” Margot suggested excited-
ly-

“They’re wasting their time if
they have,” Clifford told her. He
swung round on Tony. “Did you
give our names to any of the
agencies ?”

Tony hesitated, then nodded.
“I couldn’t help it. Some of those
outfits wouldn’t take no for an
answer.”

Clifford clamped his lips and
picked the synopsis off the floor.
“Well, Margot, have you decided
where you want to go?”

Margot fiddled with the synop-
sis. “There are so many to choose
from.”

Tony started for the door.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it.” He
waved a hand at them. “Have
fun.”

“Hold on,” Clifford told him.
“Margot hasn’t made up her
mind yet.”

“What’s the hurry?” Tony
asked. He indicated the line of
vehicles outside, their crews now
climbing into their driving cabs
and turrets. “Take your time. You
may bite off more than you can
chew.”

“Exactly. So as soon as Mar-
got decides where we’re going

AMAZING STORIES

you can make the final arrange-
ments for us and get rid of that
menagerie.”

“But Clifford, give me a
chance.”

“Sorry. Now Margot, hurry
up.”

M ARGOT flipped through the
synopsis, screwing up her
mouth. “It’s so difficult, Clifford,
I don’t really like any of these. I
still think the best agency was
the little one I found in the Ba-
zaar.

“No,” Tony groaned, sinking
down on a sofa. “Margot, please,
after all the trouble I’ve gone to.”

“Yes, definitely that one. The
dream bureau. What was it
called — ”

Before she could finish there
was a roar of engines starting
up in the boulevard. Startled,
Clifford saw the column of cars
and trucks churn across the
gravel towards the villa. Music,
throbbing heavily, came down
from the room above, and a sick
musky odor seeped through the
air.

Tony pulled himself off the
sofa. “They must have had this
place wired,” he said quickly.
“You’d better call the police. Be-
lieve me, some of these people
don’t waste time arguing.”

Outside three helmetted men
in brown uniforms ran past the
terrace, unwinding a coil of fuse
wire. The sharp hissing sound

of para-rays sucked through the
air from the drive.

Margot hid back in her slumber
seat. “Trantino!” she wailed.

Clifford went back into his
study. He switched the trans-
ceiver to the emergency channel.

Instead of the police signal a
thin automatic voice beeped
through. “Remain seated, remain
seated. Take-off in zero two min-
utes, Purser’s office on G Deck
now — ■”

Clifford switched to another
channel. There was a blare of
studio applause and a loud unc-
tuous voice called out:

“And now over to brilliant
young Clifford Gorrell and his
charming wife Margot about to
enter their dream-pool at the
fabulous Riviera-Neptune. Are
you there, Cliff?”

Angrily, Clifford turned to a
third. Static and morse chat-
tered, and then someone rapped
out in a hard iron tone: “Colonel
Sapt is dug in behind the swim-
ming pool. Enfilade along the
garage . roof — ”

Clifford gave up. He went back
to the lounge. The music was
deafening. Margot was prostrate
in her slumber-seat, Tony down
on the floor by the window,
watching a pitched battle raging
in the drive. Heavy black palls of
smoke drifted across the terrace,
and two tanks with stylized arch-
ers emblazoned on their turrets
were moving up past the burning

PASSPORT TO ETERNITY

wrecks of the studio location
vans.

“They must be Arco’s!” Tony
shouted. “The police will look
after them, but wait until the
extra-sensory gang take over!”

C KOUCHING behind a low
stone parapet running off
the terrace was a group of wait-
ers in dishevelled evening dress,
lab technicians in scorched white
overalls and musicians clutching
their instrument cases. A bolt of
flame from one of the tanks flick-
ered over their heads and
crashed into the grove of flamin-
go trees, sending up a shower of
sparks and broken notes.

Clifford pulled Tony to his
feet. “Come on, we’ve got to get
out of here. “We’ll try the library
windows into the garden. You’d
better take Margot.”

Her yellow beach robe had ap-
parently died of shock, and was
beginning to blacken like a dried-
out banana skin. Discreetly
averting his eyes, Tony picked
her up and followed Clifford out
into the hall.

Three croupiers in gold uni-
forms were arguing hotly with
two men in white surgeons coats.
Behind them a couple of mechan-
ics were struggling a huge vibro-
bath up the stairs.

The foreman came over to
Clifford. “Gorrell?” he asked, con-
sulting an invoice. “Trans-
Ocean.” He jerked a thumb at

the bath. “Where do you want
it?”

A surgeon elbowed him aside.
“Mr. Gorrell?” he asked suavely.
“We are from Cerebro-Tonic
Travel. Please allow me to give
you a sedative. All this noise — ”

Clifford pushed past him and
started to walk down the corri-
dor to the library, but the floor
began to slide and weave.

He stopped and looked around
unsteadily.

Tony was down on his knees,
Margot flopped out of his arms
across the floor.

Someone swayed up to Clifford
and held out a tray.

On it were three tickets.

Around him the walls whirled.

H E woke in his bedroom, lying
comfortably on his back,
gently breathing a cool amber
air. The noise had died away, but
he could still hear a vortex of
sound spinning violently in the
back of his mind. It spiralled
away, vanished, and he moved
his head and looked around.

Margot was lying asleep be-
side him, and for a moment he
thought that the attack on the
house had been a dream. Then he
noticed the skull-plate clamped
over his head, and the cables
leading off from a boom to a
large console at the foot of the
bed. Massive spools loaded with
magnetic tape waited in the pro-
jector ready to be played.

AMAZING STORIES

The real nightmare was still to
come! He struggled to get up,
found himself clamped in a twi-
light sleep, unable to move more
than a few centimetres.

He lay there powerlessly for
ten minutes, tongue clogging his
mouth like a wad of cotton-wool
when he tried to shout. Eventu-
ally a small neatly featured alien
in a pink silk suit opened the
door and padded quietly over to
them. He peered down at their
faces and then turned a couple
of knobs on the console.

Clifford’s consciousness began
to clear. Beside him Margot
stirred and woke.

The alien beamed down pleas-
antly. “Good evening,” he greet-
ed them in a smooth creamy
voice- “Please allow me to apolo-
gize for any discomfort you have
suffered. However, the first day
of a vacation is often a little con-
fused.”

Margot sat up. “I remember
you. You’re from the little bu-
reau in the Bazaar.” She jumped
round happily. “Clifford!”

The alien bowed. “Of course,
Mrs. Gorrell. I am Dr. Terence
Sotal-2 Burlington, Professor —
Emeritus,” he added to himself
as an afterthought, “ — of Ap-
plied Drama at the University of
Alpha Leporis, and the director
of the play you and your husband
are to perform during your vaca-
tion.”

Clifford cut in: “Would you

release me from this machine
immediately? And then get out
of my house! I’ve had — ■”
“Clifford!” Margot snapped.
“What’s the matter with you?”

Clifford dragged at the skull
plate and Dr. Burlington quietly
moved a control on the console.
Part of Clifford’s brain clouded
and he sank back helplessly.

“Everything is all right, Mr.
Gorrell,” Dr. Burlington said.

“Clifford,” Margot warned
him. “Remember your promise.”
She smiled at Dr. Burlington.
“Don’t pay any attention to him,
Doctor. Please go on.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Gorrell.”
Dr. Burlington bowed again, as
Clifford lay half-asleep, groan-
ing impotently.

'T'HE play we have designed for
you,” Dr. Burlington ex-
plained, “is an adaptation of a
classic masterpiece in the Di-
phenyl 2-4-6 Cyclopropane canon,
and though based on the oldest
of human situations, is nonethe-
less fascinating. It was recently
declared 'the outright winner at
the Mira Nuptial Contest, and
will always have a proud place
in the private repertoires. To
you, I believe, it is known as ‘The
Taming of the Shrew.’ ”
Margot giggled and then looked
surprised. Dr. Burlington smiled
urbanely. “However, allow me to
show you the script.” He excused
himself and slipped out.

PASSPORT TO ETERNITY

Margot fretted anxiously,
while Clifford pulled weakly at
the skull-plate.

“Clifford, I’m not sure that I
like this altogether. And Dr.
Burlington does seem rather
strange. But I suppose it’s only
for three weeks.”

Just then the door opened and
a stout bearded figure, erect in
a stiff blue uniform, white yacht-
ing cap jauntily on his head,
stepped in.

“Good evening, Mrs. Gorrell.”
He saluted Margot smartly,
“Captain Linstrom.” He looked
down at Clifford. “Good to have
you aboard, six’.”

“Aboard?” Cliffoi’d repeated
weakly. He looked around at the
familiar furniture in the l-oom,
the cui’tains drawn neatly over
the windows. “What are you rav-
ing about? Get out of my house!”

The Captain chuckled. “Your
husband has a sense of humor,
Mrs. Gorrell. A useful asset on
these long ti’ips. Your friend Mr.
Hai’court in the next cabin seems
sadly lacking in one.”

“Tony?” Margot exclaimed.
“Is he still here?”

Captain Linstrom laughed. “1
quite understand you. He seems
very worried, quite over-eager to
return to Mars. We shall be
passing there one day, of course,
though not I fear for some time.
However, time is no longer a
consideration to you. I believe
you are to spend the entire voy-
age in sleep. But a vei’y pleasant-
ly colored sleep nonetheless.” He
smiled l-oguishly at Margot.

As he l’eached the door Clifford
managed to gasp out: “Where
ai-e we? For heaven’s sake, call
the police!”

Captain Linstrom paused in
sui-prise. “But surely you know,
Mr. Gori-ell?” He strode to the
window and flung back the cur-
tains. In place of the large
square casement were three
small portholes. Outside a blaze
of incandescent light flashed by,
a rush of stai’s and nebulae.

Captain Linstrom gestured
theatrically. “This is the Dream
of Osiris, under charter to Ter-
minal Tours, thi-ee hours out
from Zenith City on the non-stop
run. May . I wish you sweet
dreams!” the end

( Continued from page 6)

et Society. He is the author of The Milky Way Galaxy, a non-technical
description of l-ecent developments in asti-ophysics ; and of many ar-
ticles in the fields of l-ocketry, astronomy, astronautics, magneto-
hydrodynamics, and — extra-terrestrial life.

If any of you feel inclined to ai’gue with Bova about the conclu-
sions he comes to in this pi-esent seines, you might be better advised
to do so in our lettei’cols than in person: Ben is a top-flight fencer.

AMAZING STORIES

FACT

EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL LIFE:

An Astronomer's Theory

By BEN BOVA

The readers of science fiction live in two worlds. On the one hand we
accept with a willing suspension of disbelief the existence of a multitude of
life-forms in the Universe. On the other — that is, when we have finished
reading science fiction — we wonder whether there is life anywhere else
hut on this planet.

The editors of amazing have asked expert Ben Bova to explore the
subject of extra-terrestrial life so that all of us can consider it intelligently
as well as emotionally. Mr. Bova writes, in this first article of a series of
four, about the nature of life on Earth. His subsequent articles will discuss
the scientific possibilities of life on other planets ; the inevitability of life
in the Solar System ; and the probabilities of life elsewhere in the Universe.

T HE well-endowed blonde reg-
isters stark terror, screams
and tries to get away. Towering
over her, the Giant Lobster quiv-
ers his antennas menacingly. His
malevolent claws reach out for
the blonde. She shrieks again
and runs, only to stumble and
fall. The Giant Lobster rips off
most of her clothing with one
monstrous claw, and with the
other . . .

That’s the way Hollywood
views extraterrestrial life. Just
like home, only bigger. But the
thing that makes science fiction
(and science fact) interesting is

that it must be internally con-
sistent. To blow up a two-pound
lobster into a monster weighing
several tons sounds like a shaky
business, at best.

But let’s not just sit back and
criticize. Why not build a giant
lobster? Exploring this should
help' us to see the problems con-
nected with envisioning life on
other worlds. To make certain
that our exercise is meaningful,
and not merely wasted rainbow-
chasing, we’ll be guided always
by the known laws of physics,
chemistry, biology, and astron-
omy.

F IRST, comes the matter of
size. Arbitrarily, we’ll take a
two-pound lobster and multiply
his size by a factor of 25. Since
weight depends on volume, and
volume varies with the cube of
size, our giant weighs 2 X 25 3 =
30,000 pounds — 15 tons. That
should be big enough to frighten
any blonde in Hollywood. Just to
be nasty, we’ll have our extra-ter-
restrial crustacean breathe fluor-
ine. This means he’ll have to car-

is a molecule called deoxyribonu-
cleic acid (DNA). All life on
Earth, from algae to whales, is
based on DNA. The most funda-
mental part of a living cell, the
genes, are DNA. The smallest
living creatures, the viruses, ai - e
little more than single molecules
of DNA.

You probably know that ani-
mal bodies- — our own included—
are built of proteins. Various
types of proteins also regulate all

CH,

-ch 2 -c = ch-ch 2

CH 3

ch 2 -c=ch-ch 2 -

Part of an organic carbon-chain molecule (gutta percha, a rubber-like substance). The
shaded area shows a single isoprene unit. These units link together to form the long-chain
molecule. Note that each carbon atom has four valence "links," and combines either with
hydrogen atoms or other carbons in variations that always total four.

ry some sort of breathing appar-
atus, because our air would be
poisonous to him. We can hardly
expect a 15-ton fluorine-breath-
ing lobster to have a body chem-
istry remotely similar to our own.
Or can we?

Just what is this thing called
life on Earth? What’s the differ-
ence between a living lump of
protoplasm and a non-living heap
of chemicals? What are the es-
sential requirements of life?
And, most important, how did
life get started here in the first
place? The chemical basis of life

our bodily chemical processes; in
this role they’re known as en-
zymes. Proteins are composed of
many different combinations of
amino acids. The DNA molecule,
with the aid of ribonucleic acid
(RNA), can “manufacture” ami-
no acid and proteins. DNA can
reproduce itself from simpler
surrounding material. This is the
fundamental of life. Auto-repro-
duction. The ability to make sim-
pler chemicals and build them
into a DNA molecule. No other
atom or molecule can do this. No
other atom or molecule is alive.

AMAZING STORIES

<■

Autoreproduction of DNA mole-
cule:

(A) shows a complete DNA
molecule, consisting of a double
spiral with interconnecting bridges.

In (B) the two spirals have sep-
arated by splitting the bridges in
half. Each half bridge wili connect
only with materials similar to
those it was connected to in the
original moiecule. Thus two mole-
cules exactly the same as (A) are
produced. The total mass of one
entire DNA molecule is equivalent
to six million hydrogen atoms!

W HAT’S so different about the
DNA molecule? First, it’s
the giant of the molecular world.
Inorganic molecules may contain
a half-dozen or so atoms. Organ-
ic molecules (rubber, for in-
stance) are composed of thou-
sands of atoms, arranged in a
long, carbon-based chain. But the
DNA molecule dwarfs them all.
It is composed of literally mil-
lions of atoms, arranged in a
complex double-coiled structure.
Like the oi'ganic (but un-alive)
molecules, DNA is based on car-
bon chains — that marvelous abil-
ity of carbon atoms to link up
into long, complex structures. In
DNA, atoms of oxygen, nitro-
gen, hydrogen and many other
elements combine with carbon.

DNA is built on a double-heli-
cal pattern : like two spiral stair-
cases intertwining, with con-
necting spans bridging between
them. When DNA reproduces, the
two spirals separate; the inter-
connecting bridges break in half.
The open ends of each half-bridge
are an open invitation to nearby
chemicals fo join up. But the
bridges will only accept very
specific partners; they will con-
nect only with the exact type of
molecular structure that they
were linked to in the original
molecule! Thus each half -bridge
seeks out a partner exactly like
the one it originally had. These
new partners, in turn, are forced
to link together as they join the
DNA half-molecule. When the in-

AMAZING STORIES

terconnections are completed,
each half of the original DNA
molecule has reproduced its
“missing” half. There are two
double-helix DNA molecules,
ready for business.

The question now arises :
Where did DNA come from? We
have seen that anything less than
DNA cannot auto-reproduce. A
single DNA molecule can, in
theory, explain the origin of all
the life on Eai'th. But we must
be able to explain the origin of
that first DNA molecule, or else
all we can say about life on
Earth — or elsewhere — is that it
arose “somehow.” We must view
Earth as it existed 2.5 billion
years ago . . . just before life
began.

r PHE planet had a solid crust
A and large oceans. But the
land was barren rock, lifeless, a
bleak gray landscape racked by
wind and rain, without a hint of
color. The atmosphere of the
young Earth was ammonia, me-
thane and carbon dioxide: pois-
onous to us. Only the friendly sea
would we recognize, and even that
was not exactly the same. The
oceans were less salty then, since
2.5 billions years of constant ero-
sion of the lands by rain and
wind have added considerable
salt to our modern seas. But,
then as now, the oceans were the
predominant feature of the ter-
restrial scene. The oceans con-

tained a great number of dis-
solved chemicals in their waters.
There were ions of sodium chlor-
ide, potassium, calcium, magne-
sium and several other minerals,
plus considerable amounts of
ammonia, carbon dioxide and
other gasses dissolved from the
atmosphere.

That list of ingredients excites
the biochemist. It is almost ex-
actly the same combination of
chemicals contained in living
cells. In human cells. Our bodies
today carry replicas of the an-
cient seas of Earth. Thus, while
the oceans of 2.5 billion years
ago contained no living creature,
they did hold all the necessary
ingredients. What happened
seems obvious. The chemicals in
the oceans arranged themselves
in such a way that they formed
a DNA molecule.

Of course, DNA is a fantasti-
cally complex molecule, but in
2.5 billion years, the simple laws
of statistics should be enough to
explain the foi-mation of at least
one DNA. Shouldn’t they?

N O. It’s not that easy. DNA is
composed of millions of
atoms. If the atoms are connected
at random, only according to
the laws of statistics, the chances
of reaching the exact combina-
tion of DNA (so my mathemati-
cally-inclined friends tell me)
are lO 5000 ’ 000 to 1! That’s a 1
with five million zei'oes behind

EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL LIFE

it! If you could write nine zeros
per second, it would take 24 hours
to write down that number. There
hasn’t been enough time yet in
the whole universe to expect the
proper combination to arise by
blind chance. Well, then, perhaps
it was an accident, a lucky throw
of the dice that gave us a DNA
molecule long before the laws of
statistics would otherwise have
permitted it. It’s a tempting
speculation. But if we agree that
life on Earth is a fortunate
freak occurence, what are the
chances of life elsewhere? How
many such freak occurences can
we expect in one Solar System?
Or even in one galaxy?

But look again. Remember how
the DNA helix splits and forms
two new molecules of itself from
simpler surrounding chemicals?
Those DNA half-bridges don’t
combine “at random”. They’re
very specific about their part-
ners. To some extent, all atoms
are choosy about how they com-
bine. (Anyone who has suffered
through memorizing valences in
high-school chemistry should see
this point with painful clarity.)
We can picture, then, a period of
“chemical evolution” in the prim-
eval seas that preceded the ad-
vent of the first living molecule.
Over countless millenia, atoms
combined to form constantly-
larger, constantly-more complex
combinations. Gradually, long-
chain carbon molecules arose.

Then the ring structures that
biochemists call porphyrins, pur-
ines and pyrimidines. The seas
were becoming what has been de-
scribed as an “organic soup.”
Amino acids were formed, and
then proteins. Finally the nucleic
acids — DNA and RNA — ap-
peared. The inevitable happened.
A DNA molecule met and joined
a protein, forming the first nu-
cleo-protein molecule. From then
on, DNA could reproduce nucleo-
proteins. Life began on planet
Earth. Chemical evolution gave
way to biological evolution.

All that was needed to produce
this chain of events was time and
energy. Time there was in plenty.
And the energy that impelled
these once-inert chemicals to
combine continuously was also
plentiful. There was radioactiv-
ity from the Earth’s mantle,
stronger then than now. There
was lightning lashing down on
the seas from the ammonia, me-
thane, carbon dioxide atmos-
phere. And, most important of all,
there was strong ultraviolet light
of the Sun, unfiltered by Earth’s
primitive atmosphere. The rest is
history. Or rather, paleontology.
The first living creatures no
doubt derived their energy from
the not-yet-living chemical that
abounded in the “organic soup.”
This supply soon dwindled to the
vanishing point. But life passed
its first crisis successfully.
Chlorophyll, a porphyrin mole-

AMAZING STORIES

cule, was made use of. Living
creatures learned to manufacture
their own food from inert chem-
icals and sunlight. Thus, “ani-
mals” — creatures that cannot
make their own food — actually
pre-date the first plant life.

C HLOROPHYLLIC plants in
the sea changed the face of
our whole planet. They breathed
in carbon dioxide and exhaled
oxygen, which went into the at-
mosphere. The oxygen converted
the existing ammonia/methane
combination into our familiar
nitrogen/oxygen air. Ammonia
and oxygen combined to form
water and free nitrogen :

4 NIL + 30, 6 H,.0 + 2N,

Methane and oxygen reacted
to make carbon dioxide and wa-
ter : The water joined the oceans,
CH, + 20, CO, + 2H,0
the plants breathed the carbon
dioxide, and more and more oxy-
gen was poured into the atmos-
phere to join the newly-freed
nitrogen. Finally, our type of
animal life appeared to consume
oxygen and produce carbon di-
oxide. Thus the chain of life be-
came a full cycle: plant and ani-
mal formed an atmospheric sym-
biosis.

All this presents a pretty pic-
ture indeed. But a theory is still
only so much hopeful guessing
until it’s verified — in whole or
part — by experiment. This theo-
ry has been partially verified. In

1952, at the University of Chi-
cago, biochemist Sidney Miller
mixed some of the chemicals of
the primeval sea (water, am-
monia, methane, etc.) and passed
them through an electrical dis-
charge that stimulated the ultra-
violet radiation of the Sun. He
obtained two simple types of
amino acids, plus indications of
at least two more complicated
ones. Thus there seems to be no
good reason why we can’t theo-
rize that life arose on Earth from
the “chemical evolution” of 2.5
billion years ago. Furthermore,
if we can find Earth-like condi-
tions anywhere else in the uni-
verse, we can postulate the exist-
ence of life there.

B UT most of the universe is
decidedly wi-like Earth.
What about life under non-ter-
restrial conditions? In particu-
lar, what about our giant lob-
ster, whom we left hanging over
the helpless blonde? We can use
our knowledge of life on Earth
and expand it in an effort to find
the universal requirements for
life . . . the requirements that
hold true no matter what envi-
ronment we care to discuss.

1 — Life needs a building block.
On Earth this is carbon, which
has the vital ability to link up in
chains and coils and permit the
construction of complex mole-
cules. Other elements will do this :
silicon can form chains; under

EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL LIFE

extreme conditions, phosphorus,
boron, and germanium will all
make chains. But of them all,
carbon is the most active chemi-
cally. Our giant lobster, there-
fore, will be based on carbon-
chain molecules.

2 — Life requires a solvent —
some medium in which all the
necessary ingredients can be
brought together, and in which
chemical reactions can proceed.
Earth’s solvent is water — liquid
water. Under un-Earthly condi-
tions we might expect to find li-
quid ammonia or methane, even
liquid hydrogen sulfide or car-
bon disulfide as passable sol-
vents. For our fluorine-breathing
lobster, we can imagine hydro-
gen fluoride for a solvent. That
is, we’ll simply replace the oxy-
gen in water and substitute
fluorine.

3 — Life needs some form of en-
ergy-exchange reaction, and a
healthy supply of the reacting
substance. We Earthlings use a
heat-producing biochemical re-
action involving hydrogen and
oxygen. This works nicely on a
planet practically brimful of li-
quid water. But if we go much
beyond Earth, water becomes
either nonexistent or frozen, and
different energy-exchange proc-
esses must be found. You can
probably guess that our giant
lobster’s energy reaction will be
a hyd rogen-fluorine system, since
we’ve already substituted hydro-

gen fluoride for water. This is a
dandy reaction, as far as energy
is concerned, but it does pose
certain problems. (Incidentally,
instead of fluorine, we might
have substituted for oxygen just
as easily with chlorine, bromine
or even sulfur. We would have
to juggle the temperature of the
lobster’s home planet. Sulfur, for
instance, won’t become gaseous
even at the 700° F temperature
of Mercury’s hot side; but we
could imagine a hydrogen sulfide
atmosphere at that temperature,
and seas of liquid sulfur — a cozy
warm planet indeed!)

The main drawback of these
elements is that they simply
don’t produce much energy. Life
is a strenuous business, and de-
mands a lot of energy. But the
hydrogen-chlorine reaction yields
only one-third of the energy of
the hydrogen-oxygen system.
Bromine gives one-eighth and
sulfur a scant one-tenth. Energy-
poor reactions ! But when hydro-
gen and fluorine get together, the
reaction yields 1.5 times the en-
ergy of the hydrogen-oxygen sys-
tem. More than enough to sus-
tain any lobster, giant or other-
wise.

H OWEVER, there’s a catch.
Two of them, in fact.

First, none of these elements
is very abundant, whereas oxy-
gen is plentiful in the universe
(as are hydrogen, carbon and

AMAZING STORIES

nitrogen). For instance, for ev-
ery 43 sulfur atoms in the uni-
verse, there are 1400 oxygen
atoms (and 3.5 million hydrogen
atoms). For every one atom of
fluorine, there are 1400 oxygen
atoms. This makes the chances of
a fluorine-breather somewhat
scanty. But not impossible. On
the other hand, it improves our
chances of someday meeting a
fellow oxygen-breather.

The second catch involves the
energy ratio of the hydrogen-
fluorine system. While this re-
action yields a nice helping of
energy, it also requires a lot of
energy to break up hydrogen
fluoride into its two constituent
elements. On Earth, chlorophyl-
lic plants use the red light of the
Sun to break water into hydro-
gen and oxygen. That’s the start-
ing point of our type of life. But
red light isn’t energetic enough
to split hydrogen fluoride. Ultra-
violet light is needed. If we
towed the lobster’s planet close
enough to a Sun-like star to get
the necessary dosage of UV, the
temperature of the planet would
go up high enough to boil away
the fluorine atmosphere. (A fluo-
rine atmosphere would require a
planetary temperature range
somewhat cooler than Mars’ yet
warmer than Jupiter’s.)

Our only alternative is to find
a star that emits much more UV
than Sol does. There are many
such stars: blue giants like Bi-

gel, Spica, Regulus and Acher-
nar. We can place a planet far
enough from, say, Regulus to re-
main cool enough to retain ^ts
fluorine atmosphere and still ex-
pect it to receive a strong dose
of UV. But — damnation ! — a
fluorine atmosphere would prob-
ably screen out almost all the
ultraviolet light it receives. Very
little would reach the planet’s
surface. Let’s be bold, though,
and assume that the surface re-
ceives enough UV to allow some
sort of plant life to split the hy-
drogen fluoride for us — or, rath-
er, for our lobster friends.

T HE planet itself, we’ve seen,
would be cooler than Mars yet
warmer than Jupiter: a temper-
ature averaging about — 50 °F.
Its comparatively low tempera-
ture indicates that it could be a
fairly large planet, approaching
the size of Jupiter (we’ll see
why later on). Also, it would
have to be rather large to con-
tain a goodly amount of an ele-
ment as' rare as fluorine. So we
can picture a planet approximate-
ly the size of Neptune. Its sur-
face gravity would be about 1.25
Earth’s, so our 15-ton lobster
would weigh 18.75 tons at home.

Would he really look like a
lobster? Could eight spidery legs
hold him up? Would a thin ex-
ternal skeleton keep his body
from being squashed flat by its
own weight? The answers are

EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL LIFE

Element

Universe

Earth

Crust

H (Hydrogen)

3.5 x 10 8

1,400

He (Helium)

1.4 x 10 7

C (Carbon)

38,000

N (Nitrogen)

83,000

O (Oxygen)

140,000

38,000

29,500

Ne (Neon)

160,000

Na (Sodium)

490

130

1,250

Mg (Magnesium)

11,000

1 5,000

870-8

Al (Aluminum)

870

350

3,050

Si (Silicon)

10,000

S (Sulfur)

4,300

1,800

K (Potassium)

670

Ca (Calcium)

690

330

920

Ti (Titanium)

133

Fe (Iron)

5,400

13,500

910

Ni (Nickel)

380

1,000

The abundances of the elements in the universe at large, in the Earth as a
whole, and in the Earth's crust. The number of silicon atoms is arbitrarily
set at 10,000 in all cases, and the values for the other elements computed
accordingly. Note that the universe is almost entirely hydrogen and
helium, with all the other elements forming a small percentage of "im-
purity;" while the Earth is mostly "impurity." (After Brian Mason)

no, no, and no. Weight, you re-
member, increases with the cube
of size. The strength of a sup-
porting structure (legs or skele-
ton) depends on its cross-section,
and therefore increases only with
the square of size. The lobster’s
supporting structures must grow
faster and bigger than his over-
all size. His thin exoskeleton
would have to take on the thick-
ness of a bunker wall. More than
likely, he’d forego a shell com-
pletely and develop an internal
skeleton. It works better, par-
ticularly with large sizes. His

legs would have to grow to the
thickness of a man’s torso. And
eight of them would probably
just get in each other’s way;
four would be easier to manage,
perhaps two would be best of all.
The same applies for his claws.
Enlarging them by a factor of 25
would make them impossibly
clumsy to wield ; our giant would
need muscles the size of his own
body just to lift them. And as
for dexterity, our poor burdened-
down monster wouldn’t be able
to catch an octogenarian, let
alone a healthy young blonde.

AMAZING STORIES

Perhaps he’d be better off with a
single grasping mandible. To
make things simpler (an impor-
tant aspect of life) we’ll locate it
centrally, in his head. His broad
finny tail — good for swimming —
would tend to become long and
thick if he lives on dry land.

I F you think our giant lobster
now looks more like Tyran-
nosaurus Rex than anything
else, you’re perfectly right. Given
nearly five billion years in which
to experiment and develop, life on
Earth could come up with noth-
ing more powerful, nor more
monstrous than the Tyrant Liz-
ard. He was the perfect predator.
Chances are that even his 200-
million-year-old skeleton would
scare the wits out of our blonde.
So we have a fluorine-breathing
Tyrannosaur. Is he made of nu-
cleoprotein and DNA? Yes and
no.

Certainly he needs a basic
molecular structure that can do
all the things that DNA and pro-
teins do. But our type of proto-
plasm wouldn’t last five minutes
in a corrosive fluorine atmos-
phere. Our molecules are essen-
tially hydrocarbons; our mon-
ster’s would have to be fluorocar-

bons — combinations of fluorine
and carbon. Any sane chemist
will throw up his hands and pro-
nounce a life-chemistry based on
fluorocarbons is impossible. But
he’s considering the chemistry
he learned on Earth. On a Nep-
tune-sized planet, at tempera-
tures that get down to nearly
— 100°F, with a fluorine atmos-
phere — who can say? (If you’re
wondering about the ability of
fluorocarbons to withstand cor-
rosive environments — well, one
variety of them, called Teflon, is
used on missile nose cones to
withstand the incandescent heat
of re-entry.)

So much for our so-called giant
lobster. The blonde? Since we’re
being sensible about things, our
monster has no interest in her.
She’s too small for a decent meal,
and too revolting to a monster’s
sense of beauty. Besides, she
reeks of oxygen.

Editor’s Note: That just goes
to show you . how contrary life
can be sometimes. Our next step,
next issue, will be to start hunt-
ing through the Solar System
for real — not manufactured — ex-
tra-terrestrials.

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SF PROFILE

^Jlie faintly ^JJrereSij oj

CLIFFORD D. SIMAK

By SAM MOSKOWjTZ

D URING the 17th Annual
World Science Fiction Con-
vention held in Detroit in Sep-
tember, 1959, the “Hugo” award
for the best novelet of the pre-
vious year was presented to Clif-
ford D. Simak for The Big Front
Yard (astounding, October,
1958). Simak thus became the
first science fiction author in his-
tory to receive both of the major
awards possible in the fantasy
world. The previous one had been
the 1952 International Fantasy
Award for the best novel of sci-
ence fiction or fantasy published
during 1952, City.

Had this point been under-
scored, no one would have been
surprised. The Big Front Yard
was but one of dozens of superbly
wrought tales, supreme in a
craftsmanship that endowed or-
dinary folk from humble sur-
roundings with special quali-
ties to cope with bizarre aberra-
tions of space and time, as well as

with technologies that would
have baffled an Einstein.

In The Big Front Yard, Hiram
Taine, repair man extraordinary
and antique dealer, in company
with a handyman misfit who
claims to be able to talk with ani-
mals, drives a hard bargain with
the inhabitants of another world,
who have warped his front yard
through another dimension so
that it faces out upon an alien
planet in an unguessable corner
of the cosmos.

He was typical of scores of oth-

Photo by Bonham Cross, Minneapolis Star

er Simak “heroes”, who, whether
dirt farmers, near idiots or love-
struck robots, had a function, a
reason for being in the universe
that could fathom the unknow-
able and defeat the omnipo-
tent.

Simak manages to accentuate
the positive in the personalities
of his diverse group of unlikely
supermen. He rarely dwells on
the morbid, the horrifying or the
decadent. In his worlds and in the
lives of his characters there is
room for hope, for kindness, for
decency and for a morality that
would be more obvious if the
reader were not spellbound by
the artistry of the storytelling.
Regardless of their stations, his
characters are more saints than
sinners. Good pi-edominates over
evil and optimism over dispair.

Simak’s greatest love and af-
fection is reserved for the far-
mer. Directly and indirectly,
more farmers pass through the
science fiction of Clifford Simak
than through the works of any
author outside country gentle-
man. Born on the farm of his
grandfather Edward Wiseman
on Aug. 3rd, 1904 in Millville,
Wisconsin, Simak never lost the
sweet memory of rural life.

C LIFFORD’S father, John L.

Simak, was born in Czecho-
slovakia near Prague. Son of a
butcher, though related to noble-
men who had seen better days,

he came to work as a hired hand
on the Wiseman farm. There he
met and married Margaret Wise-
man. A year later he bought some
nearby acreage, used lumber from
the land to build a log house,
and gradually cleared a farm for
himself.

Every fact seems to indicate
that Clifford D. Simak was de-
prived by his family of all the
elements needed to weave the
tangled web of neuroses which
are the birthright and plot sal-
vation of many an author. “If
you have read Bob Ruark’s The
Old Man and the Boy — well, that
was my boyhood, too,” Simak re-
calls. “We hunted and fished, we
ran coons at night, we had a
long string of noble squirrel and
coon dogs. I sometimes think that
despite the fact my boyhood
spanned part of the first and
second decades of the twentieth
century that I actually lived in
what amounted to the tail end
of the pioneer days. I swam in
the big hole in the creek, I rode
toboggans down long hills, I
went barefoot in the summer, I
got out of bed at four o’clock in
the morning during summer va-
cations to do the morning chores.
For four years I rode a horse to
high school — the orneriest old
grey mare you ever saw, and yet
I loved her and she, in her fash-
ion, loved me. Which didn’t mean
she wouldn’t kick me if she had
a chance. And before high school.

THE SAINTLY HERESY OF CLIFFORD D. SIMAK

I walked a mile and a half to a
country school (one of those
schools where the teacher taught
everything from first grade
through eighth).”

Young Clifford had to toe the
line when there was work to be
done, but was permitted all the
romping he wanted when there
wasn’t. Finances were generally
severe; but despite problems the
family, which included a younger
brother, was closely knit and de-
voted.

Two simple factors set his
mind towards journalism and
writing. He recalls vividly watch-
ing his mother read a newspaper
when he was about five.

“Does the newspaper print all
the news from all over the
world?” he asked.

“It does,” she replied.

“Does it print the truth?”

“It does.”

“From that moment on I knew
I wanted to be a newspaperman,”
Simak affirms. “And don’t you,
dammit, snicker.”

A SECOND contributing fac-
tor was the old family read-
ing circle so popular years ago.
The family would gather ’round
while the mother or father read
a book or newspaper. A magic
and wonderful world came into
view from those readings.

Though he got along well with
the rest of the boys, Simak did
not care for athletics. Scholasti-

cally he did somewhat better,
standing second in his high
school graduating class of Patch
Grove, Wisconsin. A series of di-
verse jobs followed high school,
pivoting on a two year’s teacher
training course which found him
an instructor for the next three
years. An attempt to work his
way through the University of
Wisconsin failed and led to his
first newspaper job on the IRON
river reporter, Iron River, Mich-
igan.

During this period, several oth-
er events occurred which were to
shape his entire life. An avid
reader of Jules Verne, H. G.
Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs,
he found himself really hooked
when he picked up amazing
stories in 1927 and became a
regular reader.

A chance meeting with Agnes
Kuchenberg at the Cassville, Wis-
consin moving picture, while Si-
mak was teaching, blossomed into
romance and they were married
on April 13, 1929. Only weeks
earlier Simak had accepted the
staff position on the iron river
reporter.

Like any newspaperman, he
wanted to write ; because he liked
science fiction he decided that
was the natural medium to dab-
ble in. His first effort, The Cubes
of Ganymede was completed and
shipped to amazing stories in
early 1931. Its editor, T. O’Con-
nor Sloane, then approaching oc-

AMAZING STORIES

togenarian status, didn’t believe
in rushing things. He never both-
ered to inform Simak whether he
was going to use the story, but
two years later the April, 1933,
issue Of SCIENCE FICTION DIGEST,
one of the earliest fan magazines,
listed Cubes of Ganymede as one
of the “Stories Accepted by ama-
zing stories for Publication.”
Finally, in 1935, Sloane returned
the story as a bit dated in view
of the changing trends in science
fiction. Simak never quite recov-
ered from the incident and the
manuscript remains unpublished.

The next attempt was more re-
warding. World of the Red Sun
found a home with Hugo Gerns-
back’s wonder stories and ap-
peared in the December, 1931, is-
sue of that magazine. The story
displayed a clear, stark writing
technique. Dealing with time
travel, the adventurers into the
future encounter a gigantic
glass-encased brain which holds
the degenerating remnants of
mankind in thrall. The rtien from
the “present” destroy it by em-
ploying the psychological weapon
of derision. Beyond its obvious
debt to H. G. Wells in its basic
theme and the concept of the ul-
timate degeneration of man as a
species, World of The Red Sun
was fundamentally a second gen-
eration science fiction story,
whose framework and filling were
derived from the products of the
science fiction magazines. It was

the work of a man steeped in the
still-fresh lore of the science fic-
tion world, who assumed that the
reader was familiar enough with
the medium to accept on faith
imaginative notions that were
destined to become literary dog-
ma.

World of the Red Sun was fol-
lowed quickly by Mutiny on Mer-
cury in WONDER STORIES, March,
1932, a minor action story of the
revolt of the Martian and Selenite
workers on Mercury and their
eventual defeat at the hands of
an earth man wielding a sword
dating from the Napoleonic wars.

T HOUGH badly over-written
and melodramatic, The Voice
in the Void which appeared about
the same time in the Spring,
1923, WONDER STORIES QUARTERLY,
showed considerable power in
handling, involving the desecra-
tion of a sacred Martian tomb,
containing the bones of the “Mes-
siah”. The fact that the Martian
tombs are constructed in the
shape of a pyramid provide a
clue to thd fact that the sancti-
fied bones are those of an Earth-
man. As in World of the Red Sun,
Simak’s obvious familiarity with
hundreds of past science fiction
stories enabled him to repeatedly
avoid trite situations and close
on a note of originality.

Simak experimented with send-
ing his next story, Hellhounds of
the Cosmos to astounding sto-

THE SAINTLY HERESY OF CLIFFORD D. SIMAK

RI Es. It was accepted and pub-
lished in the June, 1932, issue.
Hellhounds of the Cosmos told of
a “black horror” out of the fourth
dimension. To counter it, a sci-
entist sends 99 men into the par-
allel world where they occupy a
single grotesque body. They suc-
ceed in terminating the invasion
at the price of remaining the rest
°f their lives in the alien place.
Hellhounds of the Cosmos is
worth noting because it is the
first story to betray a tendency
towards mysticism that frequent-
ly spills Simak’s science fiction
over an ill-defined perimeter into
the world of fantasy.

Simak’s first cycle of maga-
zine publication ended with The
Asteroid of Gold in the Novem-
ber, 1932, WONDER STORIES. A
space pirate who takes the gold
found on an asteroid from two
explorers and leaves them there
to die, is doomed to spend the rest
of his life invalided as a result
of a broken back at the hands of
his victims. Here, as in Hell-
hounds of the Cosmos, Simak re-
veals a sharp line of demarca-
tion between black and white and
brings about sure, grim retribu-
tion for the evildoers.

T'HE temporary suspension of

ASTOUNDING STORIES early in
1933 left Simak without a pay-
ing market. Both wonder stories
and amazing stories, the only
other magazines, wore skipping

months and it seemed likely that
any issue might be their last.

Simak wrote one more piece of
science fiction, The Creator, lit-
erally for love, since, as far as he
was concerned, there was no mar-
ket. “Had there been a market,”
he asserts, “the story would nev-
er have been written for I would
have slanted for that market.” In
that story, a time machine car-
ries two earthmen to the labora-
tory of an intelligent “cone of
light” that created the universe
as an experiment. Three other
outre-worldly beings, by coinci-
dence, also arrive on the scene.
Together they act to prevent
“The Creator” from destroying
the universe.

Shortly upon completing The
Creator, Simak received from a
science fiction fan, William H.
Crawford, notification of the pub-
lication of a “literary” science
fiction magazine which solicited
stories offering a lifetime sub-
scription as payment. Simak let
Crawford have the story out of
sheer admiration for any man
with guts enough to try a new
science fiction magazine. The Cre-
ator, as published in the March-
April, 1935, marvel tales was
probably read by only a few 7 hun-
dred readers; yet, by letter, by
word of mouth and through com-
ments in fan magazines the mes-
sage got around that Clifford D.
Simak had written a “classic,” a
daring story that defied the ta-

AMAZING STORIES

boos of newsstand magazines.
While there are certainly crudi-
ties in The Creator, many pol-
ished modern writers would
gladly exchange some of their
stylistic sheen for the enthusi-
asm, excitement and mysterious
wonder imparted in that tale.

(To bring the story to a larger
audience, fantastic magazine re-
printed it in July, 1961.)

S 1MAK still felt the itch to
write and tried a few things
outside the science fiction field,
but they came off too poorly to
submit. Despite the bitter eco-
nomic pall of the depression
years, he managed to keep work-
ing. His reporter job on the IRON
RIVER reporter grew into the edi-
torship. He left that position in
August, 1932, to assume the top
spot on the spencer reporter in
Spencer, Iowa. In July, 1934,
he shifted again to the editorship
of the dickinson press, Dickin-
son, North Dakota.

The purchase of the spencer
REPORTER by the McGaffin News-
paper Co. of Kansas, a much
larger organization, offered a bet-
ter long-range future and he re-
turned there in April, 1935, in
time to help convert the paper
from a semi-weekly to a daily.
Pleased with his work, the com-
pany made him an editorial trou-
ble shooter, transferring him to
Excelsior Springs, Mo., where he
worked on the EXCELSIOR STAND-

ARD; then to the editorship of
their Worthington, Minn, paper,
and finally to the brainerd dis-
patch in Brainerd, Minn.

Though his writing activity
had ceased, Simak continued in-
termittent reading of science fic-
tion, without too much enthusi-
asm, until late in 1937 when he
learned that John W. Campbell,
Jr. had been named editor of
astounding stories.

“I can write for Campbell,” he
told his wife. “He won’t be satis-
fied with the kind of stuff that is
being written. He’ll want some-
thing new.” There is the possi-
bility, he now admits, that if
Campbell had not been named
editor of astounding stories, he
might never have written science
fiction again.

His first attempt was Rule 18,
a novelet of the annual foot-
ball rivalry between Mars and
Earth and the search back in
time to assemble a team of all-
time pigskin greats to defeat the
potent Martian eleven. This ap-
proach was off-beat for science
fiction at the time, since it util-
ized the immense potentials of
scientific invention to influence a
sports event, instead of saving
the world from disaster.

Campbell was so enthusiastic
about the story that he plugged it
as “One of the year’s best novel-
ets,” prior to its appearance in
the July, 1938, issue. Rule 18,
while popular, rated only fourth

THE SAINTLY HERESY OF CLIFFORD D. SIMAK

in the issue in the readers’ es-
timate. Nevertheless, Campbell
continued to promote Simak’s fic-
tion. He gave prominent advance
notice to Simak’s Hunger Death
in the October issue, dealing with
the problems of Iowa farmers re-
settled on Venus. This story is
important, inasmuch as it finds
Simak dealing with the type of
people he knows. Characters fa-
vored second only to farmers in a
Simak tale are heroic newspaper
reporters.

T) eunion on Ganymede, Simak’s
J-*- next, was featured on the
cover of the Nov., 1938, number.
Dealing with a planned anniver-
sary get-together of veterans of a
war between Earth and Mars, the
story finds two members of oppo-
sing forces thrown into a situa-
tion where they reconcile their
grievances. It was not an out-
standing effort, but it lead the
issue in reader approbation.

The themes of the three sto-
ries, a football game of the fu-
ture, Iowa farmers on Venus and
an old war veteran going to a re-
union on Ganymede represented
a major move in the direction of
naturalness in science fiction.
While Simak may not have com-
pletely come off in his presenta-
tions he was exploring a gambit
that would eventually produce
pay dirt.

The Loot of Time, published in
THRILLING WONDER STORIES for

December, 1938, was more in the
traditional vein, sti'essing the
sentimental attachment that
springs up between a group of
time travelers, actors in a power
play in time, and a Neanderthal
man who inadvertantly gets in-
volved with the sciences of his
future.

In giving readers a new type
of story should he dispense with
the old ? Campbell felt that while
change was inevitable, there was
still room for what he called the
“power” story and what has been
termed by others as the “super
science” or “thought variant”
tale; stories along the lines of
E. E. Smith, where entire uni-
verses weigh in the balance,
where space and time are merely
tools in the hands of advanced
science.

At his request, Simak wrote
Cosmic Engineers, a novel which
ran in three parts beginning in
the February, 1939, issue of as-
tounding. Cosmic Engineers em-
ployed ideas of truly epic propor-
tions including a civilization of
robots who were guardians of the
universe, a girl scientist in sus-
pended animation for a thousand
years (but improving her mind
all the time) , another universe in
collision with ours, a council of
great intellects of many worlds
and dimensions to cope with the
problem, and thrilling trips
through time; a novel with
enough thrills for five sequels.

AMAZING STORIES

Nevertheless, Simak personal-
ly considered the effort a failure.
He had hoped to blend some of
the ground-roots feel of ordinary
people into the work but found
that “you had to be grandiose in
spite of yourself.”

R EAD uncritically, Cosmic En-
gineers is a much more ex-
citing reading experience than
the author would lead one to be-
lieve. It does not bear close ex-
amination, however, since thei'e
are too many loose ends; but it
is reminiscent in portions of The
Creator, even possessing a God-
like manipulator who is senile
and insane. This same “God” is
the collective absorbtion of an
entire race into a single intelli-
gence, bearing some resemblance
to Olaf Stapledon’s notion of the
“Cosmic Mind.”

Following Cosmic Engineers
Simak decided to embark on a
new project. A fictional picture of
each of the planets as science
knows them today. The first in
this series was Hermit of Mars
(astounding, June 1939), a cov-
er story involving the efforts of
an earth scientist to transform
his flesh and blood body into an-
other of pure force, such as that
possessed by the Martians.

Writing ceased for the next
nine months. Simak, feeling that
he was moribund with the Mc-
Giffin Company, resigned from
that organization and went to

work on the copy desk of the
Minneapolis star. As far as the
newspaper career was concerned,
he had found his niche. He soon
would become chief of the copy
desk.

H IS first work after the shift
of positions was also one of
his most successful. Rim of the
Deep in astounding science fic-
tion, May, 1940, was one of the
earliest of those rare stories
dealing with the exploitation of
the sea bottom and the day when
population pressures would force
men to live beneath the waves.
The novelty of the notion was not
lost on readers but it has been
infrequently picked up by other
writers, the most notable subse-
quent works in this vein being
Fury, by Henry Kuttner and The
Deep Range, by Arthur C. Clarke.

Clerical Error which followed
in August, 1940, ASTOUNDING was
intended to be a second in his
“planets” series, dealing dramat-
ically with conditions on Jupiter;
Masquerade (astounding,
March, 1941) involved a doctor
who discovered crystals oi im-
mortality bn Mercury. With Tools
(astounding, July, 1942) con-
cerning a radioactive gaseous life
form on Venus, he quit the series
as a bad idea.

There were other stories of
solid competence during this per-
iod, but the sad part about a man
who is gradually becoming a lit-

THE SAINTLY HERESY OF CLIFFORD D. SIMAK

erary craftsman is, that if he is
really good, people will not be
aware of his skill. This was true
of Simak. Hunch in the July,
1943, ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FIC-
TION early displayed his much-
imitated technique of permitting
the lead character to think to
himself for the readers’ benefit.
Hunch brings into being “Sanc-
tuary", an organization that
helps rehabilitate or offer peace
of mind to those who have men-
tally broken under the pressures
of advanced civilization, offering
to them a haven when all else
fails.

TN the “City” series which fol-
lowed and established Simak’s
reputation, it was a newspaper-
man, armed with the tools of lit-
erary artistry and well versed in
the problems of urban living that
took the very obvious theme of
decentralization of cities and fo-
cussed the spotlight on the im-
pact of this trend on the indi-
vidual. It had been many years
since David H. Keller, M.D., had
dealt with the impact of current
trends on the sociological and
economic wellbeing of the aver-
age man. Looking back from the
vantage of the present, the con-
census rates City (astounding
SCIENCE FICTION, May, 1944) as
a “gem.” From the immediacy of
1944 its theme struck an un-
familiar note and opinion was
divided.

I T was the second story in the
series. Huddling Place (as-
tounding, July, 1944), that so-
lidified a positive reaction to
what Simak was trying to do. It
displayed a decitified planet
where personal contact had be-
come increasingly abhorrent,
culminating in the crushing hor-
ror of a man’s realization that he
is unable to leave his home, even
to save the life of a good friend,
and with it a new concept of phil-
osophy that would advance man-
kind 200.000 years in a single
stroke. Huddling Place is a true
masterpiece of science fiction, in
or out of the continuity of the
series.

Nathaniel, the talking dog of
Census (astounding, Sept.,
1944), was the name of Simak’s
own pet scottie. When the “City”
series was collected in book form
by Gnome Press in 1952, the vol-
ume was dedicated to Nathaniel.
From his participation also
sprang the idea of connecting the
tales as legends told by intelli-
gent dogs of the future, long aft-
er man had disappeared from the
planet. In this tale, too, are in-
troduced the mutants who intro-
duce technology to the ants.

Desertion (astounding sci-
ence fiction, Nov. 1944) was
written before any of the other
stories and was not originally in-
tended to be one of the series. It
was included as an afterthought
when the book was assembled, to

AMAZING STORIES

show the beginning of man’s
transference from human to Jovi-
an bodies, a natural prelude to
Paradise (astounding science
fiction, June, 1946), where the
political decision as to whether
the bulk of the human race
should migrate to Jupiter and
convert to Jovian form is made.

In Hobbies (ASTOUNDING SCI-
ENCE FICTION, Nov., 1946), the
decision is made to give the dogs
and the robots an opportunity to
build a future for themselves
without physical or psychologi-
cal interference from the few re-
maining men. The Cobblies,
strange creatures from another
dimension are here introduced.

The near primitive remnants of
man show the robots how to dis-
pose of the threat posed by the
Cobblies in Aesop, Dec., 1947, a
tale that teeters perilously close
to fantasy and mysticism since
the Cobblies allegorically assume
the role of the ghosts and goblins
(imaginary fears) that once
plagued mankind.

The point of the entire series
was delicately brought home in
Trouble With Ants published in
FANTASTIC ADVENTURES for Jan.,
1951, when Jenkins, the robot
guardian of the canine civiliza-
tion, awakens a man from sus-
pended animation to learn how to
stop the ants, whose civilization
threatens to end the dogs’ reign
of the planet. A simple way to
stop the ants, offered by the man,

is rejected because it will mean
killing. There has been no killing,
even of fleas, for five thousand
years and the robots and dogs
prefer to be dispossessed, rather
than revive it as a means of set-
tling problems.

“The series was written in a
revulsion against mass killing
and as a protest against war,”
states Simak. “The series was al-
so written as a sort of wish ful-
fillment. It was the creation of a
world I thought there ought to
be. It was filled with the gentle-
ness and the kindness and the
courage that I thought were
needed in the world. And it was
nostalgic because I was nostalgic
for the old world we had lost and
the world that would never be
again — the world that had been
wiped out on that day that a man
with an umbrella came back to
London and told the people there
would be a thousand years of
peace. I made the dogs and robots
the kind of people I would like to
live with. And the vital point is
this: That they must be dogs or
robots, 'because people were not
that kind of folks.”

F ROM 1942 to 1945, science fic-
tion was but a small part of
Simak’s fictional production. A
larger portion of his spare-time
efforts went into air war and
western stories, particularly for
Leo Margulies and Thrilling
Publications. The tales were so

THE SAINTLY HERESY OF CLIFFORD D. SIMAK

formularized that Simak simply
couldn’t continue writing them
and live with himself, so he
dropped their production and
turned entirely to science-fiction.

Eighteen years after his mar-
riage, a first child, Scott, was
born in 1947 and a second, Shel-
ley, in 1951. He was promoted to
News Editor of the Minneapolis
STAR in 1949. In this position
he was responsible for the entire
news content of that paper. When
space and atomics became more
important he was put on special
assignment, developing a science
news program for the star and
its companion paper, the tribune.
In 1959 he commenced writing a
weekly science column called “To-
morrow’s World,” for which he
was eminently qualified and
which was received with enthus-
iasm.

Sitting as pivot man on the
news desk of one of the nation’s
leading papers gave Simak a
broad view of the world. The be-
lated additions to his family ad-
ded the humanity to temper his
outlook on world events.

These elements are apparent
in Eternity Lost, a novelet in
July, 1949, ASTOUNDING SCIENCE
FICTION, in which a senator of the
future plays politics with the is-
sue of longevity. Maturity in
viewpoint and consumate literary
craftsmanship are combined to a
degree rarely encountered in or
out of the science fiction world.

Horace L. Gold, then in the
process of assembling the con-
tent of a new magazine titled
GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION, had
written Simak asking to see
something from him just as the
finishing touches were being put
on the novel Time Quarry. Serial-
ization began in the first (Octo-
ber, 1950) issue of that magazine
and played a commanding role in
its successful establishment.

The novel, an underrated mas-
terpiece, is electric in its spec-
tacular display of writing tech-
niques manipulated to suit the
need of the events and impel the
reader through space and time
with as curiosity-provoking and
imaginative a complex of events
as ever presented in major sci-
ence fiction. Simak’s concept of a
religion of the future is as con-
vincing as it is brilliant.

A man crashes on a world of
formless intelligences. They re-
store him to life and impart to
him the secret that they inhabit
as parasites every creeping,
crawling, flying life form that
lives in the universe; that as a
race, theirs is the symbiotic des-
tiny, to light the spark that even-
tually may lead to intelligence.

“Nothing walks alone,” is the
message they give him. This in-
formation he includes in a book
which becomes the bible of a new
religion. It particularly fasci-
nates the androids, who feel that
this common denominator makes

AMAZING STORIES

them the spiritual equal of man.

The effoi’ts of man of the fu-
ture to influence the writing of
this book through altering events
of the past carries the reader
back to the farm where Simak
was raised. The author’s hobbies,
his likes and dislikes, including
touches from famous science fic-
tion works, as well as a grizzled
image of himself in old age, in-
vest the work with a richness of
content that makes it completely
satisfying. Published in book
form as Time and Again by Si-
mon & Schuster during 1951, it
unfortunately did not receive the
attention it deserved.

F OLLOWING 1952, the year in
which City received the Inter-
national Fantasy Award, Simak
became the leading symbol of
morality among modern science
fiction writers; one of the rare
few who, while sensitive to the
terrible pressures of the time,
did not succumb to dispair. His
fantastic creations became sym-
bols to illumine human problems.
As far back as Hunch, the “sanc-
tuary” allegorized the depend-
ence of the masses upon the
crutch of religion ; Eternity Lost,
in which a politician making cap-
ital of longevity discoveries lit-
erally loses his immortal soul,
figuratively makes its point;
Courtesy (astounding, Aug.,
1951) underscores the thin line
between dignity and arrogance.

Like Olaf Stapledon, with
whom he seems in philosophical
accord, Simak represents himself
in his fiction as an agnostic,
searching the limits of imagina-
tion for an answer to the riddle
of human life. His work reveals
a tendency to depart into mysti-
cism, an indication of fundamen-
tal religiosity which Stapledon
openly admitted at the very end
of his life. The difference is that
Simak has not boxed himself in
emotionally by raging at the in-
ability of his imagination to an-
swer the impossible.

Carefully exploring the rich-
ness of human behavior in terms
of the encounter with the alien
and the unforeseen, classics of
science fiction continue to come
from Simaks typewriter. A Death
in the House, published in GAL-
AXY as recently as 1959, belongs
in that category. Delineating the
kindness of an old farmer to a
dying creature from another
world, it is destined to be re-
printed often.

Many new writers, among them
Chad Oliver, have discovered and
learned from the method of Clif-
ford Simak. Yet the truth is that
Cliff ord D. Simak at the age of
57 works so hard at both the
technique and substance of the
art of being a science fiction
writer that he represents a
brighter prospect for the future
than any newcomer in sight.

THE END

THE SAINTLY HERESY OF CLIFFORD D. SIMAK

A Classic Reprint from AMAZING STORIES, October, 1936

The Qouncil of \ Drones

By W. K. SONNEMANN

Introduction by Sam Moskowitz

I N science fiction, only three
stories by W. K. Sonnemann are
known to have appeared, all pub-
lished in AMAZING STORIES. His
first story, a short novel in the
September, 19 Si amazing sto-
ries titled The Master Mind of
'Venus received the same sort of
reader raves that presaged the
discovery of such great names as
Stanley G. Weinbaum, Edward
E. Smith, David H. Keller, M. D.
and others who established them-
selves with their first story.

The Council of Drones, pub-
lished in the October, 1936 issue
was his second story and it clear-
ly displays the originality of ap-
proach and story-teller’s narra-
tive of this author. While the
skill of the polished professional
is lacking in the opening pages,
once into the body of the story,
the author displays a truly re-
markable talent.

If one were to categorize this
tale, it belongs in the “life
among the insects” class, with
Peril Among the Drivers by Bob
Olsen (amazing stories, March,
1934), based on the transference

of a man’s intelligence to the
body of a driver ant, being the
closest approach to it. The device
for transference of intelligence
in Council of Drones is open to
question but the author’s inti-
mate knowledge of the bee socie-
ty is not. The fact that a final
story by this author, Greta,
Queen of Queens (amazing sto-
ries, Feb., 1938) involves super
intelligent bees lends credence to
the supposition that the author
engaged in the raising of bees as
a profession. When you have fin-
ished this story you will believe
that science fiction can be educa-
tional as well as entertaining . In
fact, the question will be strong-
ly raised as to whether or not
scientifically informative science
fiction isn’t far more entertain-
ing and stimulating than a su-
perficially disguised cloak and
dagger story transferred to a
planet.

The magic of this particular
story rests in the fact that the
protagonist relates it from the
viewpoint of the bee. In contrast
we also encounter the situation

from the viexvpoint of man, with
the same personality sharing
both viewpoints. Despite all the
foregoing, I have not revealed
all the points of originality of
this story.

It is unfortunate that, when
AMAZING STORIES Was sold to
Ziff-Davis in 1938, W. K. Sonne-

mann’s name disappeared from
the role of science fiction writ-
ers, never to be heard of again.
Upon completing The Council of
Drones, I feel that many of you
will agree that when Mr. Sonne-
mann decided to leave the science
fiction field, tve all lost a great
deal.

CHAPTER I

TTHE full magnitude of the gen-
ius of Newton Ware had never
dawned on me. I was aware of
the fact that he was a most bril-
liant engineer-physicist, but I
had always had a tendency to
consider him more theoretical
than practical. During his dis-
course on and demonstration of
his new invention, which he had
named “Cross-Rays, with Lifex
Modulation,” I concluded that he
was not only a genius but also
intensely practical.

“I can understand the ‘Cross-
Rays’ term,” I said, “because I
see that you focus two rays of
light upon a spot where they
cross, but wherein do you derive
the term ‘Lifex’?”

Newton looked at me in the
manner of an old friend about to
divulge a confidence.

“Do you know what life is?”
he asked, very seriously.

“No, not exactly.” My answer
was ready enough, even though I
was somewhat surprised, for we

had talked on the subject before.

“Neither do I, but I believe I
am on the track of it. I mean in
terms of something you can de-
fine with scientific accuracy, like
vibrations of a given frequency
in a given medium. So far, I have
learned more about the frequen-
cy of vibration and its relation
to electrical frequencies than I
have about the medium. Because
I can not yet define life definitely,
I have chosen the term ‘lifex’
rather than ‘life’.”

Newton was like that. Even in
the face of his great invention,
his unselfishness and modesty
made him careful lest he should
overrate its value even by sug-
gestion in the name. At once his
other sturdy characteristics
flashed through my mind and
gave me a deeper insight into the
probable import of his invention.

“Life rays, eh?” I mused,
aloud. “Not death rays, and so
not an instrument of war. But
how does it work? Does it affect
life in some tangible way?”

“I called you over to witness

100

AMAZING STORIES

an experiment of the largest
magnitude I have yet attempted,
if you would care to see it,” he
replied.

“If I would care to? Proceed at
once. I am all eyes.”

N EWTON produced from a
cabinet a live mouse in a
cage.

“I have studied this mouse
through that.” He indicated a
detached part of his equipment
consisting of a maze of lights,
light filters, screens transparent
and opaque, graphs, and some-
thing that resembled a pair of
binoculars made over.

“I have also studied the family
cat, Puss,” he continued, “who
now sleeps so unsuspectingly on
yonder chair. Watch both of
them closely.”

Newton placed the mouse on a
pedestal where the modulated
rays of light were made to cross
when the apparatus was in op-
eration. He then sat down before
his equipment and closed a num-
ber of switches starting current
to two very large lamps, an X-ray
machine, an ultra-violet lamp,
and a battery of radio tubes and
coils. Following this, he manipu-
lated a number of dials on a pan-
el. Occasionally he paused for a
consultation of his notes, which
were mostly in the form of logo-
graphs. In a moment or two his
adjustments were satisfactory,
I presumed, for he grasped an

electrode in his left hand and
pressed a key momentarily with
his right, a look of expectation on
his face. The mouse immediately
began to behave queerly, where-
upon Newton released it from the
cage.

It was a matter of several sec-
onds before the answer to the
peculiar behavior of the mouse
and the cat dawned upon my
mind. The life of the cat and the
life of the mouse had exchanged
bodies ! As extraordinary as this
revelation was, there was no oth-
er explanation to a cat trying to
squeeze through a small hole in
the wall while a mouse cuffed at
it, jumped on it, and bit it. I
wanted to laugh, but sheer
amazement prevented me, and
Newton later told me that I mere-
ly sat with my jaw dropped and
my eyes popping. Finally, when
the mouse began to lacerate one
of Puss’ ears, Newton called a
halt. He captured the mouse as
easily as he would a pet cat and
returned it to the cage.

“Would you call the experi-
ment a success ?” he asked, glee-
fully.

I was still too amazed to reply.

“Never mind,” lie continued.
“Let’s reverse the process first,
changing the cat back to a cat,
and then we shall discuss the
matter.”

For all I could tell, he went
through exactly the same pro-
ceedings as before, but with dif-

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

101

ferent adjustments. It was over
in a few seconds. The mouse
quivered in the cage, frightened,
while Puss ceased trying to es-
cape from the room. When the
mouse was again released, Puss
made short work of it.

“Now,” he continued, “tell me
how you liked that.”

“How did I like it?” I queried.
“It was most interesting. I en-
joyed the experience thoroughly,
I think. But I am still non-
plussed. And if this is really the
machine that you have been so
secretive about the last six
months, how in the world did you
get thus far along in so short a
time?”

“Oh, things just seemed to
work out right. The cat-mouse
episode was merely the final ex-
periment to confirm my equa-
tions in their final form. I am
now ready for larger subjects.”

“Such as man?” I asked, al-
most fearfully.

“No less a subject than a man
himself, Fred,” he replied, quite
seriously. “I am hopeful that
you might give me an idea as to
just what a man might care to
exchange bodies with for a short
while in order to — well, say, to
increase his knowledge. I need
some valuable idea so that the
first subject could be persuaded.”

T THOUGHT this over for a
•*- while before replying. A great
many thoughts raced through

my mind, and I was highly sus-
picious that Newton Ware had
already conceived the idea that
was forming in my own mind.

My mind turned quickly to
thoughts of life itself. Some-
times, when things go awry and
there is nothing but discourage-
ment on every side, the pattern
seems haphazard and purpose-
less. Then some peculiar coinci-
dence, accident, or happening
turns up, that seems to have
such definite bearing on the case
as to unify the whole of what
has gone before, and one won-
ders whether it be coincidence or
a part of an unknown plan. This
was one such incident, if I in-
terpreted it correctly.

It had been ten years since
Newton and I were college class-
mates in engineering. Our lives
had separated at graduation as
we reported to different employ-
ers, and now they had been
thrown together again in the
small Texas town, from which we
both hailed, through the opera-
tion of ecpnomic disturbances.
Newton had lost his position
when his employer Became in-
solvent, and, after a fruitless
search for other work, he had
returned, single, to his father’s
home to play around with his
own ideas on his own time until
times got better.

As for myself, I had brought
my family to my father’s farm as
a temporary measure to make my

102

AMAZING STORIES

savings last longer while I de-
termined what was to be the next
move. I had not been long in
finding it. During my absence,
my father had acquired a few
colonies of bees to manage as a
sideline and a hobby, and I was
more or less amazed myself at
how quickly I, an electrical engi-
neer by training, had become so
deeply interested in those mar-
velous insects. In my consuming
desire to find another way to
make a living, I found it easy to
learn that the country was full
of flowers, understocked with
bees, and to come to the conclu-
sion that scientific methods and
mass production could be applied
to beekeeping in such a way as
to make it a profitable vocation.
I had determined to embark on
the venture wholeheartedly the
following spring.

And now this had occurred. If
a man could really know his bees
— know everything that goes on
inside of the hive and its rela-
tionship to instinct and outside
conditions — how much better
could he manage them? Newton
was now offering me such a
means of really studying my
bees as no other man before had
ever been able to apply. Was
this a mere coincidence, or — ?

“I have a very definite idea,”
I said, somewhat warily.

Ware was all attention.

‘‘Bees. The ordinary honey
bee.”

“Just what would you expect
to learn?” he asked. The peculiar
light in his eyes betrayed a sub-
dued satisfaction, and I knew
that I had guessed the truth.

S EVERAL things,” I replied.

“For instance, no one knows
exactly why bees swarm except
that it is an instinct designed
for the preservation of the spe-
cies through the establishment
of new colonies to replace those
that die from one cause or an-
other, or are destroyed. We know
that we can keep swarming down
to a minimum by giving bees
plenty of hive room when they
need it, by leaving them plenty
of honey and pollen for their
own use as food, and by keeping
the colony supplied with a young
queen so that the bees are con-
tented with their home. Bees will
sometimes cast a swarm in spite
of these precautions, however,
and swarms are a plague to the
commercial honey producer who
already has as many colonies as
he needs. From his standpoint,
Dame Nature’s method of mak-
ing two colonies out of one by
swarming is merely a division of
the working forces resulting in a
decreased honey crop. If we could
know more about the conditions
or influences that cause the
swarming instinct to become
dominant, we might be able to
devise additional means to entire-
ly prevent it. There are several

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

103

other things concerning colony
life that could be learned to ad-
vantage, too.”

‘‘Would you care to attempt
the experiment as a subject?” he
asked, barely able to control his
excitement.

“Not today, thank you. I shall
have to think about it some. I
have a wife and kids at home,
you know. It would not be so
good if anything went wrong.”

“Yes, I know.” Newton’s man-
ner evidenced both relief and pa-
tience.

“Now, if you are interested,
let’s go into some of the scientific
details of this thing.”

I spent four solid hours with
him and learned very little. It
would have been foolish, of
course, to expect to learn in four
hours all that Newton Ware’s
brilliant and imaginative mind
had developed in six months of
diligent effort. I could see that
he had several equations repre-
senting as many different forms
of life, all of them derived by
complicated mathematics from
one master equation. The vari-
ables were the same in each equa-
tion, although sometimes with
different exponents, but the con-
stants were different for differ-
ent forms of life. Nature’s con-
stant, the natural logarithm,
e = 2.71828, appeared at least
once in each. A constant ap-
peared in the human equation
which did not occur in any of the

other equations. He called it the
immortality constant. In deriv-
ing and setting up the various
sub-equations, Newton had had
to develop the elements of a new
branch of mathematics that was
very difficult for me to follow,
and, ten years ago, I had made
A’s and B’s in calculus. I became
convinced that his particular in-
spiration for the conception and
interpretation of all the equa-
tions and the principles involved
was peculiar to himself alone,
and I rather doubted if anyone
else would fully understand his
work for many years to come. I
gave up at last and took my
leave, fatigued, and with a touch
of headache.

CHAPTER II

I SPENT a troubled night, alter-
nating between periods of
doubt and periods of confidence.
I did not consult my wife, of
course. To have done so would
have been to put an end to all
further deliberation. Her vote
would have been a most emphatic
no!, and I could not have blamed
her. I am open to criticism for
not having treated her squarely
in the matter, but let that drop.
My eyes were turned toward the
glorious prize involved. Newton
had offered me the opportunity of
becoming the greatest living au-
thority on the subject of beekeep-
ing, through intimate first hand

104

AMAZING STORIES

experience, and my ambitions
were far from being dead. It was
not that I particularly cared for
fame that would come to me, but
that I did particularly care with
all my soul for the means of mak-
ing a substantial living for my
family in a vocation that inter-
ested me tremendously. To
emerge from the experiment suc-
cessfully would, without the
shadow of a doubt, contribute
greatly to my success in my new
vocation, for I should know what
to do for my bees in their man-
agement, how to do it, when to
do it, and why it should be done.
I would be equipped to become
the nation’s leading honey pro-
ducer, and, quite possibly, the
nation’s most successful breeder
of high quality queen bees. But
how about the risk involved? I
was confident that Newton was a
genius, and that, in all probabil-
ity, the experiment would go
through without a hitch. But
suppose it did not? Suppose I
should die in the experiment,
leaving my wife a widow and my
children fatherless? I wondered
what the percentage was, and
what percentage risk of dying I
should take without consulting
my wife. Perhaps I should have
erased the whole thing from my
mind, but I could not. Ambition
urged me on.

It was not until I visited the
post office the following day to
obtain the mail that I made up

my mind definitely. An item I
had been expecting was in the
box, and again the coincidence-
factor occupied the foreground
of my thoughts. I could not get
away from the subtle suggestion
that, once again, the means of
making the experiment had been
thrust into my life. The item in
the mail was a queen bee in a
mailing cage. I made up my mind
definitely, once and for all, win
or lose. A few minutes later I
was ushered into Newton’s lab-
oratory.

I handed him the queen bee
mailing cage that had arrived in
the morning mail. It consisted of
a small block of wood about 1%
in. x 3% in. X % in. On one flat
side three holes of about 1 inch
diameter had been drilled nearly
through, these holes overlapping
so that there was passage be-
tween them, and the cavity thus
formed in the block was covered
by a piece of wire screen secured *
by tacks. In this cavity there
were one dozen worker bees and
one queen' bee. The space they
occupied, however, was restrict-
ed to two of the one inch holes;
the other, on one end, being filled
with a special candy prepared by
kneading together a mixture of
honey and powdered sugar. This
candy-filled hole connected with
the outside world through a
smaller exit hole drilled into it
through the end of the block and
which was also filled with candy.

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

1105

A similar hole in the other end
of the block connecting with the
open space that the bees occu-
pied was closed with a piece of
metal. It was through this latter
hole that the bees had been
forced to enter the cage.

“Inspect the future abode of
my soul,” I said, lightly.

“Do tell! Just which one of
these devilish bugs do you wish
to be?”

I pointed out the queen.

“Tell me about her,” he said.

T INTENDED to. I bought this

young queen from a well
known queen bee breeder, be-
cause I wanted to give his strain
of Italian bees a trial. Dad and I
have a colony in which the queen
is old and failing and we wish to
replace her. (Left to themselves,
the bees would ultimately raise a
new queen themselves, but there
is no reason why we should wait
on their fancies.) We shall open
the hive, seek out the old queen,
and destroy her. We shall then
place this queen in the hive, cage
and all, and close it up. The hive
bees will eat away at the candy
from the outside and the caged
bees will continue to use it for
food. In three to four days the
candy will be eaten away to a
point where the new queen can
emerge from the cage. By this
time she will have acquired the
colony odor, and will be accepted
as the new queen of the colony.”

“Accepted?” he queried.

“Yes. If I released this queen
in a normal colony of bees she
would meet her death. Bees, as a
rule, will not tolerate but one
queen at a time.* They would
recognize the stranger as such
by her different odor and would
put her to death by a means
known as ‘balling,’ in which a
tight cluster of bees about the
size of your fist surrounds her
and literally hugs her to death.
Even if she escaped this fate, as
soon as the new queen met the
old one there would be a fight to
the death between them. But, in
using the method I outlined, the
bees become acquainted with the
fact that they are queenless in a
few minutes after the old one is
killed and are ready to ‘be reason-
able’ when the new one walks out
of her cage. The proposition of
her acquiring the colony odor is
in accordance with the best bee-
keeping texts. Anyway, the
method works, and it is perhaps
the simplest one of several.”

“Very interesting,” he com-
mented.

“Very. Now, if you are still in-
terested, focus your binoculars
and graphically strained light
rays on her majesty and measure

* When bees raise a new queen to super-
sede an old one they will sometimes permit
the old queen to live for a while after the
new queen begins to function before they
kill the old queen. Thus two queens may
some times be found in the same hive at the
same time. A queen will ordinarily live
three, four, or five years if unmolested, but
she does her best work in her first two years.

106

AMAZING STORIES

the pulse of her life frequencies.”

Newton took up the task with
an exclamation of delight.

“You’re next,” he said, when
finished.

“Oh, no ! Not yet,” I countered.
“Wait until she is successfully
introduced to the colony. I want
to be a queen bee in a normal
colony and not a queen bee in a
cage.”

O NE week later I reported to
Newton, rather nervously,
that the new queen was safely
introduced.

“Now, listen,” I exclaimed.
“You understand, I only want to
make this exchange for a period
of five minutes, and no longer.
If I get back to humanity with-
out difficulty, I shall consider a
longer period of time for the
next trip, but I can’t learn much
this time and be worrying about
whether I am going to get back
or not.”

“Your wishes shall be respect-
ed. Five minutes — no longer.”

I felt kind of dizzy as Newton
turned those crazy looking bi-
noculars on me. I didn’t know for
sure but what I had a little rath-
er undergo a major operation. At
least, in major operations, there
were records to show what per-
centage of cases for different ail-
ments survived. In my particular
case, there was absolutely no hu-
man precedent. Even granting
that Newton was the wizard I

gave him credit for being, I knew
that the business of tampering
with my mind was risky. I might
come out of the experiment alive
but without any mind. Good
Lord! I had rather be dead! In
the latter case, I at least had the
present consolation that my life
insurance was paid up.

My thoughts, grew hazy. I
wondered if I were half hypno-
tized by Newton’s eyes and those
ungodly binoculars. Five min-
utes, then back to humanity,
safe, sane and sound. Newton
was able to manage it.

“All ready now,” he an-
nounced. “If you will just step
over here under the cross-rays.”

I did, numbly. The intense
light hurt my eyes, but, through
half closed lids, I watched him
make the adjustments. Then- —

I might as well have been hit
by a bolt of lightning. The stag-
gering, man-killing, terrifying
jolt that I received can never be
adequately described. I might
say that, in a way, it felt as if
my life had been taken apart, re-
solved into as many parts as he
had terms in his equations, and
each part separately treated to
hell’s fire and brimstone. It was
over in an instant, however - , and
the pain was gone.

CHAPTER III

T HINGS seemed so strange. I
was different. I struggled to

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

107

place myself — to raise my hands
to my face to see if I was still
here, or somewhere else, and I
found that there was no physical
response to my will. Then, sud-
denly, I realized that that, which
I had expected to happen, had
actually occurred. My own single
unit of human intelligence, that
which I call I, was now bound up
in the physical confines of a
queen bee! In spite of the fact
that I had expected it, it was a
staggering thought to find that
I actually was an insect. I had
no hands, and no face to raise
them to. Merciful heavens !

These thoughts occupied but a
moment before the physical sens-
es of the queen bee’s body that I
now occupied began to make
themselves more manifest. There
was a sense of hearing that I
recognized as such, and a sense
of feeling. Struggling to forget
the turmoil in my consciousness,
I concentrated on these senses to
more thoroughly interpret the
impulses to my brain.

There was a slight buzz about
me. I had thought so at first,
half-consciously, and now I was
sure of it. And — why, yes, there
were a number of worker bees
massaging my body with their
mandibles. One was even offering
me food.

Here, indeed, was a real prob-
lem. How was I do take that
food? The human impulse to
open my mouth failed entirely.

for I had no human mouth to
open. It was at once apparent
that I must endeavor to estab-
lish controlling contact with the
nervous system of my new body
in order to govern it. How could
I? While debating the problem,
I attempted to shift my position
slightly, much as a human does
when he is uncomfortable, or
fidgety, and I found to my de-
light that four of my legs moved.
The return impulses that told me
that I had moved by means of my
legs seemed to reveal the key to
the situation in a manner very
difficult to describe. It seemed
that I must first become cogni-
zant of the parts to be moved,
and realize a sense of possession.
In a moment, I had fluttered my
wings. With the greatest delight
in this success and an incom-
parable spirit of adventure, I
concentrated on my mouth parts.
In a moment I was fully aware
of them and what they felt like,
and I had extended my proboscis
to sip up the food offered me.

A T the same time that I was
assuming control of the phy-
sical attributes I was also uncon-
sciously becoming more closely
attuned with instincts that
seemed inseparably bound up in
the queen bee’s body. Even
though I was already aware of
the functions of a queen bee in
the colony as a matter of human
knowledge, I now became aware

108

AMAZING STORIES

of these functions and duties
from the standpoint of the bee.
It dawned upon me that I had
entered the body of the queen
during a normal rest period dur-
ing which she takes food and
rests, and that the rest period
was about over. The offering of
food that I had received had been
the last of several, and, now that
it was consumed, I was expected
very shortly to be up and about
the business of laying eggs for
the maintenance of the colony
population. Holy, jumping Jeho-
sophat ! I, a man, expected to lay
eggs! Oh, well, it was a part of
the bargain, and it would per-
haps be instructive to me at that.

With what was notv an almost
perfect control over my physical
equipment, I set about my duties.
Forgetting human will, I gave
myself over to queen bee instinct
and progressed over the combs,
laying eggs in cells prepared to
receive them as the urge came. It
was rather an easy job, with no
hurry, no fretting, and every-
where a circle of worker bees to
pay me homage as I passed them
on the combs. I paused once in
my labors to observe the pollen
dance of a worker bee, and again
to observe the nectar* dance of

* Nectar is the raw material from which
honey is made. It is the secretion of nectaries
on honey plants, these nectaries not neces-
sarily being: located only in the blooms. As
gathered, it is highly diluted with water.
The bees evaporate the excess water from
the nectar by thox-ough ventilation of the
hive as a part of the ripening process. When
thoroughly ripened into honey, the cells con-
taining it are sealed with a capping of wax.

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

another, those peculiar dances
they perform to announce the
finding of a new supply in the
field. After all, the whole experi-
ment was full of romance and
adventure.

It seemed to me that I had
been engaged in laying eggs for
only a very short period of time
when the next rest period oc-
curred. I felt a faint foreboding,'
but I was tired and felt the need
of nourishment, and paid it no
heed. The rest period was about
half over when, as I was becom-
ing refreshed, the truth of the
matter shot through me in its
sickening entirety. The working
periods of the queen bee cover a
span of about twenty-five min-
utes ! Good Lord ! What had hap-
pened to Newton and his appa-
ratus? I was to be here only five
minutes ! I knew that nothing in
the world that he was capable of
controlling would have prevent-
ed him from carrying out his
pledged word to me, consequent-
ly I was certain that some dire
catastrophe had overtaken him,
and he was unable to return me
to my own body. My wife and
children — everything that I held
dear upon the earth that I had,
to all practical purposes, depart-
ed from — passed in instant re-
view before my mind. The awful
realization that some terrible
mishap had prevented the suc-
cessful completion of the experi-
ment sapped my strength away.

109

CHAPTER IV

I T was the following day before
I could gather the remnants
of my horror-stricken mind to-
gether to do any ordered think-
ing. I knew then that it was a
day later — the night period hav-
ing come and gone — and I fur-
thermore knew that any ordi-
nary accident that could have
happened to Newton’s apparatus,
save possibly the breakage of the
X-ray tube, could have been re-
paired by this time and I would
have been returned. Some kind
of premonition told me that I
would never escape from the hive
alive, and yet my saner reason
told me that it was possible that
the X-ray tube had broken, and
that in a matter of a few days it
could be replaced. I pinned my
faith to this hope and set about
making the best of the condi-
tions in which I found myself.

It seemed logical to me to be-
gin with a study of my own capa-
bilities and my place and powers
in the life of the colony. Almost
immediately, in this more re-
laxed mental state, I discovered
that a sense, granted me in my
new physical equipment, was of
considerable importance, and
somewhat of a nature that hu-
manity would call a sixth sense.
The organs located in my anten-
nae, those delicate little “feelers”
that emanate from the head,
were the means by which this

sense was manifest. I relaxed
still more, giving myself over as
much as possible to the full play
of this sense, and was delighted.
It seemed double in nature, al-
though I could never be sure
whether this was the case, or if
there were two distinct senses. At
any rate, there was a sense of lo-
cation. (I recalled having ob-
served, when still in human
form, that I had almost never
seen a bee leave the hive for a
flight in the fields without first
stroking her antennae with her
first pair of legs. At the time I
had assumed that she was get-
ting her “homing instinct” into
play — (“oiling up the direction
finder,” as I was wont to put it).
This sense of location appeared
to be very efficient, and I realized
that the defective sense of sight
granted me was of small impor-
tance by comparison. Without
being aware of it, I had been
utilizing this sense in making
my way about the combs as well
as if I had been guided by my
human eyes and the broad light
of day.

My admiration of this phase
of sixth sense, which I shall
hereafter speak of as “location,”
was suddenly interrupted by the
manifestation of the second
phase, which was a means of
communication between individ-
uals. Without sound, of produc-
ing which a bee is capable, and
without hearing, of which a bee

110

AMAZING STORIES

is capable, I was being addressed
through this phase of my sixth
sense. I was not being spoken to,
and yet I know of no better way
to describe the transference of
thought from one individual to
another than to speak of it in
this narrative as though so many
words had been spoken.

“The nectar is good, Masoul.
The nectar is bounteous, Masoul.
There is plentiful pollen. Let the
life of the city wax strong, Ma-
soul. Let us raise brood to raise
more brood.”

S IXTH sense told me that I was
being addressed by two work-
ers, one an older bee with not
many more days to live, and an-
other younger bee. And, I re-
flected instantly, my name must
be “Masoul.” Probably I inter-
preted the meaning of the
thought sense as such because I
was the soul of the colony, being
the mother of all.

“More eggs you would have,
Owo?” I said.

“More eggs in the empty cells.
It is good to fill all empty cells
with eggs of the Owo. But, 0
Masoul, be sparing of the eggs
for the drone." Just a few of the
drones. Our city is now beautiful
with many drones. O Masoul, is it
good?”

“It is good, Owo,” I replied.
Something about it all seemed
so droll that I would have
laughed if I could, and yet it was

utterly serious. I resolved upon
an experiment.

“There will be more food for
me if I lay more eggs, Owo?” I
asked.

“The food will be good. It will
be plenteous, Masoul.”

“That is good. But, Owo, please
instruct my nurse bees that,
while I find the nectar from the
mesquite and the pollen from the
goldenrod go to make a delight-
ful food, I would like a desert of
royal jelly.”* **

T HE experiment was success-
ful from the standpoint of
demonstrating a point. I knew,
without question, that the
thought had emanated from me
through sixth sense. I also knew
that it had not properly regis-
tered in the consciousness of the
worker bees. They were creatures
of some intelligence, but which
intelligence was dominated by
the binding chains of instinct.
Instinct told them to feed the
queen a predigested food of pol-
len and honey and they could do
no other way. They could not
vary the proportions, nor could
they produce royal jelly for my
consumption. Royal jelly would

* The male bee.

** A white, jelly like substance secreted by
nurse bees, which is used to feed those
larvae which are intended to develop into
queen bees. Chemical analyses of the foods
given to queen larvae, worker larvae, and
drone larvae show that they differ materially
in the relative percentages of protein, fat,
and sugar. The nurse bees must have a diet
of both honey and pollen in order to produce
these foods.

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

never be produced except under
the stimulus of a developing
queen cell in the hive.

“There will be plenteous food
for Masoul,” was the reply, and
that settled that. I had learned
that any attempt to change the
routine of life in the colony would
be beset with difficulties.

The days began to pass in
dreary succession. The only di-
version granted to me was to
think, and because that process
was usually far from being pleas-
ant, there were long periods
when I was practically nothing
but a machine. I laid the eggs
the colony demanded, and it is
doubtful in my mind if ever a
natural queen laid eggs in such
symmetrical patterns, or skipped
so few cells as she progressed
over the combs.

Occasionally, however, I found
myself thinking fast and furi-
ously, usually raging against my
fate and the loss of all connec-
tion with those I held dear on
earth. Self-abasement was often
a prominent note in these mental
sprees, and each left me a bit
more discouraged and dejected.
There seemed to be no hope of
improving my condition. Even
my greater intelligence appar-
ently would not allow me to speed
up to any appreciable degree the
processes of evolution so that I
might effect any changes. As a
matter of fact, I was not able to
conceive any changes that I

would like to make, that would in
any wise alter the fact that, after
all, I was queen bee, doomed to
exhaust the vitality of my body
in the laying of eggs, until age
overtook me and death came.
Furthermore, I was unable to
conceive any means of my own by
which I might be returned to hu-
manity. I did not blame Newton
for his failure to return me to
my own body, but I would des-
perately have liked to know what
had happened. In my discourage-
ment and despair, I relaxed into
a state of tired, dull, half-con-
scious dreaming, allowing queen
bee instinct full control in gov-
erning my actions.

T HEN came the havoc. What
kind of mental reaction, if
any, is produced in the brain of
a normal bee by the smell of pun-
gent smoke I did not know nor
care. With me, it wreaked de-
struction. The first blast of
smoke welled up through the hive
and strangled me. The fact, that
I knew what the smoke was for,
was no consolation. I knew that
a man was about, and there was
no doubt in my mind but that the
man was my own father. I re-
member instantly that he always
smoked the bees far more than I
did, and I despised him for it on
the instant. He knew that smoke
takes the fight out of bees that
would have stung him, and that
these bees, instead of stinging,

112

AMAZING STORIES

become demoralized, and start
goring themselves on honey from
uncapped cells. Another blast of
smoke surged up through the
hive to deal me misery, and I
fretted and fumed and swore.
Forgetting for the moment that
the smoke at the entrance was
only preparatory to opening the
hive, I dashed madly for the top,
only to be greeted by the full
benefits of a hot, strangling blast
as the cover was lifted. Memory
returned, and I sought fresh air
at the bottom and near the en-
trance, where fanning bees were
laboring to clear the hive of
smoke.

It seemed to me that the ex-
amination of the colony must
have lasted for fifteen minutes.
There was no robbing of the hive.
It seemed that my father was
merely looking things over to see
how the colony was getting
along. One by one, the frames of
comb were lifted from the hive,
examined, and replaced. I re-
called that in days gone by, when
we had worked together in these
examinations, we always kept a
sharp look-out for the queen to
see that she had not been acci-
dentally killed on the last ex-
amination, and I knew that he
was looking for me. I did not
wish to be seen, for I was in no
mood for any closer contact with
a human and his terrible smoke
than could be avoided. I man-
aged to avoid the frames that

were lifted for examination, and
to lose myself always in the larg-
est group of bees that could be
found. If my father wanted to
know that the queen was still
alive and heal thy ; he could de-
termine that by looking for eggs.
At the end, the hive was closed,
and I breathed a sigh of relief.

The excited activity of the
worker bees in clearing the hive
of the last vestiges of smoke was
efficient and orderly, and accom-
plished results in a remarkably
short time. It was an hour or so,
however, before the usual colony
activities were resumed, for, on
the first blast of smoke, instinct
had caused vast numbers of the
bees within the hive to gorge
themselves on honey from the
uncapped cells. Instinct had told
them that there was trouble ; that
they might lose the last drop of
the sweet fluid; and that they
would need all they could hold, a
supply sufficient to last for sever-
al days, with which to make a
fresh start. Time was required
for the scare to pass away and
for these bees to disgorge them-
selves. During this time I was
left to my own devices.

I T was perhaps best that little
attention was paid to me, for
I was experiencing the utmost in
mental turmoil and agitation. I
am quite unable to explain just
how those strangling fumes
worked the change in me that

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

113

they did, but the fact remains
that my outlook on my life in its
present conditions was consider-
ably changed. Previously, I had
been human in a different form;
now, I found that I was neither
human in mind nor yet entirely
bee. I might say that my mental-
ity was brought more in accord
with the self-preservation in-
stincts that are typical of the
bee, and that my human intelli-
gence. went through a change
which did not erase its ability to
reason, but which threw its sym-
pathies with the bees more than
with humanity. The terrible dis-
comfort I had suffered had re-
moved from me in some way the
last vestiges of human emotion,
and I can say now, though with
regret, that love for my family
did not exist. Memory of my pre-
vious emotional life was vague,
and any recollection that I cared
for my wife and children, or any
other human, was of no conse-
quence. It mattered only to me
that I knew that I was an un-
usual queen; that I had reason-
ing powers that were now dia-
bolically cunning; and that such
reasoning powers could operate
to their fullest extent without
losing in any way the connection
between them and the natural
senses and capabilities of the
queen bee body that I possessed.
Along with this introspection
that revealed my powers, I was
conscious of the fact that seeds

of hate for the robbing, smoking
humans had been sown, and that
I expected to use my reasoning
powers to fight humanity and its
meddling with our colony life to
the fullest extent.

There were signs that the or-
derly work of the colony was
about to be resumed, and I pre-
pared for a round of egg-laying.
I had made the rounds of the
combs since my stay in the hive,
and it was now time to begin
over again, where I had original-
ly started, where I knew that
bees would be crawling out and
vacating cells. With a firm step
and a directness of purpose, I
made my way to this section,
only to find that I was a bit
early. I had done good work in
the last twenty-one days, and
had filled all available empty
cells in just slightly less time
than is required for the original
eggs to hatch, pass through the
larval stage, and pupal stage,
and emerge. There was nothing
to do but wait, and I was sud-
denly grateful for the rest. I had
some hard thinking to do. For
the moment, I began a review of
the things I knew about colony
organization.

W HEN nectar is plentiful and
there is much work to do in
the fields, the average life of the
worker bee is about six weeks.
The first two or three weeks are
spent within the hive, where the

114

AMAZING STORIES

worker does such inside duties as
comb building with the wax se-
creted from her wax glands, ven-
tilation, cleaning, standing
guard, and feeding the young
larvae. The remainder of her life
is spent in field work bringing in
loads of nectar and pollen for use
in the colony. At night, when
more nectar is being brought in
than is required to meet the daily
needs of the colony, these older
bees assume the additional duty
of augmenting the force of bees
that ventilate the hive in order
to hasten the process of ripening
the nectar into honey. Thus,
when the season is good, they
work themselves to death. Hun-
dreds of them fail to return each
day, probably because worn-out
wings are unable to carry the
load.*

As far as I was able to deter-
mine, there was no social or-
ganization nor duly constituted
authority established to adminis-
ter colony affairs. The younger
bees did the inside work because
it came natural to them and be-
cause there was inside work to
do. The older bees gathered nec-
tar and pollen because instinct
bade them do so. Instinct was the
same in them all and governed
their actions. The same instinct
caused them to feed me greater
quantities of food as more food

* During the height of the season the pop-
ulation of a strong colony of bees will run
about 60 to 70,000 individuals.

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

was available in the field, and
the natural result was that I laid
more eggs to replenish the popu-
lation. If the flow of nectar di-
minished I was given shorter ra-
tions, laid fewer eggs, and the
field bees lived longer. They re-
garded me as a necessary item, of
course, but only as an egg-lay-
ing machine. If there were any
vested authority within the hive,
it rested solely with the middle
aged worker bees in the prime of
their lives as a group, and as
instinct affected them.

It was time to make a change.
I expected to take up the reins
of supervision myself and con-
trol the destinies of the colony.
There was no time better than
the present in which to be-
gin. Several of the middle-
aged bees passed close to me and
I halted them with the sixth
sense.

“Owo,” I said, “I have long
been your faithful servant and
have done well in filling the cells
with eggs. Is it not so?”

“It is well, Masoul.”

“I have followed your orders
to lay more eggs for more brood
under your able direction,” I con-
tinued.

“It is well, O Masoul,” was the
reply. “We of the Owos know
best how to direct you.”

“You lack a whole lot of know-
ing what is best for you, for me,
or for our beautiful city, Owo,”'
I retorted. “I, Masoul. know best.

115

'From now on I am chief super-
visor of all activities. You un-
derstand?"

P RIOR to that change which
was effected in me by my
terrible ordeal at the hands of
my father and his ill-smelling
smoke, I would not have been
able to get this idea across. Now,
however, I was in more closely
adjusted tune with my bee in-
stincts and senses, and the
thought registered perfectly. I
was delighted, even though the
results were not satisfactory.
The immediate reply showed this.

“It is not according to the age
old plan, Masoul. We die Soon, to
be followed by others who die
soon. We have age. The life of
the ages back is in tune with us,
and we know from the ages. You
must serve us as Masoul has al-
ways served us.”

I knew that what they meant
was that instinct was stronger
in them than in me, therefore,
according to instinct, they
should direct. The queen of the
colony, preceding me and from
ages back, had been a creature
of less intelligence than even the
workers, and that she had al-
ways followed the direction of
the workers in whom instinct
was strongest. They did not
know that I was different.

“Owo,” I replied, “the ages
are dead. My Masoul mother is
dead, and I am different from

her. I have the ages in me, but
I also have the future. I am dif-
ferent. I am stronger than you
as no Masoul has ever been. I
know best. You will follow my
direction.”

I had made a distinct impres-
sion, possibly because my will
was strong, but I did not take
time to rejoice over it. I was
surging forward.

“What would you have us do,
Masoul?”

“I would have you prepare
yourselves to fight away the
smoke and the man. You enjoyed
them?”

“We did not!”

“I will deliver you from them.
We will gather nectar for our
own use, and not for the use of
man. We will have no more smoke
after a while. We will have no
more robbing after a while. We
will conquer man. But it will take
planning and organization.”

“0 Masoul, if you can deliver
us from man and his smoke, we
shall have even a more beautiful
city.”

I properly understood this to
mean that life would be more
pleasant.

“Very well, Owo, we shall be-
gin. You have six legs. You can
count to six?”

“We can number for our legs,
Masoul.”

“Then I direct you to form a
guard of seventy-two bees, and
yet another guard of like num-

116

AMAZING STORIES

ber, and yet another guard. You
do not comprehend seventy-two,
but I shall teach you. Choose
you from among the aged, field
bees the number of six, one for
each of your legs, and number
one leg for these six bees. Do
this again for another leg, and
again until you have six bees for
each leg. You will then have
thirty-six bees. Choose another
thirty-six bees, and then you
shall have the seventy-two bees
which I charged you to get. We
shall call this the number one
company, and the first six bees
shall be leaders. I want three
companies.”

B Y dint of much effort and
repetition, I got the idea
across so that these workers
knew just how to choose three
companies of seventy-two bees
each. I had rather have had com-
panies of an even hundred, but
this, I felt, would require too
much effort.

“We shall choose the guard
from among the old field bees,
Masoul.”

“It is good, Owo. And I have
fair reasons to choose the guard
from the older bees, as you shall
see. You remember the smoke
today?”

“We were present, and we suf-
fered much.”

“How many of my bees stung
the man? How many of my bees
died?”

“But one of us stung the man.
She lost her stinger and died.
Two bees were crushed by his
clumsy hands as he went through
our beautiful city.”

“Were they old?”

“The two crushed bees were
young, Masoul. The stinging bee
was old.”

“The stinging bee was old,” I
replied. “She would have died
soon. She lost not many days of
useful life in gathering the nec-
tar by stinging the man. It is
better so. If young bees sting
the man, then we lose many days
of life, and our city loses. Let
not young bees form the guard
to lose many days of life. Let al-
ways the guard be formed of old
bees who have not many days to
live. Are my thoughts not wisest,
Owo?”

“O Masoul, you have more than
the ages in you.”

“Then be about your task.
When you have organized the
three companies come again to
me, and I shall further direct.”

“We go.”

CHAPTER V

I T occurred to me when they
were gone that I had taken a
tremendous responsibility upon
myself. From now on I had to per-
form in order to warrant the con-
fidence I had j'ust gained. If it re-
quired only the skill and patience
necessary to keep a military or-

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

117

ganization on duty and suitably
directed, I had little to worry
about, for I felt completely capa-
ble of that feat. On the other
hand, I was not sure that a mili-
tary organization such as I
planned would accomplish the
results that I had promised. I
had promised to free the colony
from the meddling of man. If the
first step failed, I must think of
something else. If I failed alto-
gether, then what? To tell the
truth, I was suddenly a little
afraid.

My newly found worries were
short lived. Underneath my feet
a young bee was gnawing away
at the capping covering her cell
as she prepared to emerge. I
moved away to give her room,
and began to reflect upon the
subject of how difficult it was
going to be to persuade a com-
pany of seventy-two bees to at-
tempt to sting a man all at once.
I did not reflect on this subject
long.

The emerging bee completed
her task, stood for a moment dry-
ing her wings and massaging her
antennae, and then became aware
of my presence.

To put into words of the Eng-
lish language the thought that
emanated from the young bee is
an extremely difficult task. In
English, it almost sounds ridicu-
lous, yet, from the standpoint of
its startling effect, she might as
well have spoken the following:

“Why, hello, Mom, old girl.
What the Sam Hill are you doing
here? What am I doing here?”

Having finished approximately
this thought emanation through
sixth sense, the newly emerged
worker was quite evidently as
surprised as I, and incapable of
further communication at the
moment. To say that I was sur-
prised would be putting it mildly.
Paralyzed, I clung to the combs,
my mind alternately racing in
thought and frozen in consterna-
tion. At length I recovered suf-
ficiently to “speak.”

“W'hat did you say, Owo?” I
might say I gasped.

“I hardly know, Masoul. What
is this? What is it all about?
I find myself a newly emerged
bee. Instinct pictures my life
plan before me, and yet it does
not seem quite right. Why should
I be a bee?”

nPHERE could be only one pos-
sible explanation of this most
unusual situation wherein a
worker bee seemed to exhibit an
intelligence akin to my own, and
I conceived it. In haste, I pro-
ceeded to explain to this new
worker my theory of how it came
about with the intention of en-
listing her aid in explaining to
the other thousands of workers
that would be emerging from
now on.

I told the new worker that
mentally I was human, and phy-

118

AMAZING STORIES

sically a queen bee. Passing
briefly over the fact that my in-
telligence had exchanged bodies
with an insect as the result of
an unfortunate experiment that
had been only half completed, I
next informed her that she was
the first offspring from eggs laid
by my body after the change. As
such, through the operation of
hereditary laws, she had been
endowed in half with human in-
telligence, doubtlessly of limited
capabilities by virtue of the fact
that half of her hereditary gifts
came from the drone father,
which had mated with my queen
bee body before my occupancy,
and which drone was, of course,
merely a normal male bee. I told
her that I could expect much
more from her in the matter of
cooperation, and from her new
sisters, than I ever could from
those workers which had devel-
oped from eggs laid before that
fateful experiment 21 days ago.
Still more briefly, I explained that
I had assumed control in the colo-
ny for the betterment of our
lives, and that I expected her and
her sisters to fall readily in line.
The reason for my haste in this
explanation was good, for all
about me young bees were gnaw-
ing away the cappings of their
cells. I dispatched the new work-
er to the nearest with definite
instructions to repeat this story
to the emerging bees as quickly
as possible.

I repeated my story to a half
dozen surprised new workers, or-
ganized them into a corp of in-
structors, and then obtained re-
spite. My instructors worked fast
and each new bee became a re-
cruit so that my services were no
longer needed. My prediction
had been correct, for each new
bee was found to be half -human
in intelligence.

I WAS glad at the cessation of
my labors, for I wanted to
think. Certainly I must be right,
but how? Another bee with in-
telligence derived from me! It
seemed preposterous, but it was
so. I had dismissed the problem
as solved in my first haste by
assuming that hereditary laws
were responsible without know-
ing exactly how. Now that I had
more time to think, the complete
explanation gradually worked it-
self out in my mind.

I had entered the insect body
and had taken complete control
of its functions. The body mus-
cles responded to my will, thus
indicatihg that my mentality
was in controlling contact with
the nervous system. If this be
so, and it certainly was, then
why should not the bodily proc-
esses, through which chromo-
somes are formed, also be in tune
with my life through the nerv-
ous system equally as well as it
was in tune with the former
queen? The results proved the

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

119

point. Then again, I thought, the
capacity for intelligence must
certainly be a dominant factor
as treated in the Mendelian law
of inheritance and not a reces-
sive factor. As such, it would cer-
tainly be transmitted to the off-
spring. Dismissing the problem
as solved in so far as I had need
to solve it, I deliberated upon the
vastly changed circumstances.

r PHE entire population of the
colony would be of my own
offspring in a few short weeks,
all half human in mind, and the
work of organization, planning,
and execution of details would
be vastly simplified. I might
even go so far as to obtain ad-
vice from some of my offspring,
these being perhaps somewhat
more in tune with bee instinct
than I, but this point was yet to
be demonstrated and there was
no hurry about it. There might
even be some pleasure in exist-
ence now, with individuals to
converse with. Furthermore, im-
proved means were at my com-
mand for carrying on the fight
against humanity. A sneering
thought occurred to me that hu-
manity itself recognized the fact
that the mastery of the world
was still in dispute between it-
self and insects, and that only
by its greater intelligence did
man have any show at all. Now
things were to be changed. My
colony of bees was fast becoming

endowed with a certain degree of
man’s most important weapon.
Ambition awoke in me. Such be-
ing the case, why should I not
set my goal at complete mastery
of the world for the benefit of the
bees alone? A riotous thought
that set my heart to pounding.
Plans — plans — what a world of
plans to be made lay before me.

Before evening came, with its
cessation of field activities, those
Owos that I had sent to organize
companies of fighting bees re-
turned to report the completion
of their labors. I gave them in-
structions as to the disposition
of the guard. One company was
to remain in flight about the hive
and at rest in the trees during
the day ready to attack man at
the least provocation. Another
was to remain on duty about the
entrance and just inside, to at-
tack at the first smell of smoke,
and another was to be on duty at
the top of the hive prepared to
fight if the hive were opened. It
was well enough to proceed with
this plan,, even though I expect-
ed changes to be made as the old-
er bees died and my own off-
spring became predominant.

The sun went down, and in the
evening’s twilight vast numbers
of laboring field bees, that knew
no other life than to work, re-
turned to the hive. Some of these
returned only to continue their
labors by fanning their wings,
while others clustered about the

120

AMAZING STORIES

entrance, contented, resting, and
perhaps thinking of flowers. It
was better not to disturb them,
so I called together those bees in
which I took great pride, my
own offspring, for a conference
in the upper portion of the hive.

“Owos, you know your exist-
ence,” I said. “You have been
told wherein you are different
from your predecessors. Are you
content?”

The first few that I had had
contact with acted as spokesmen,
and I found it convenient to
name these. I called them Mary,
Lucille, Ann, and Betty. Mary
replied.

“We know that we are as we
are, Masoul. There is nothing
that we can do about it. We seek
that happiness that may be
granted to us in our short span
of life.”

“I hope that I may do much
to improve your lot,” I replied.
“Your lot is most amazing and
unnatural, even as mine is, and
we shall work together to do the
best we can.”

“We are willing to cooperate,
denying those instincts that tell
us that we, as Owos, should di-
rect you, not you us,” said Ann.

“It is best, Ann,” I said. “You
are half as I am, else you would
not see it so readily. And I shall
always continue to have more ex-
perience than you, for I shall live
thx-ough more than you, your
days being more numbered.”

“It is too true, Masoul.”

“Perhaps not quite so conven-
ient, Betty. For, if my plans do
not work out to perfection, 1 shall
live through more smoke than
you, and smoke is most distress-
ing.”

“So instinct tells us.”

“Chalk up a score for instinct.
But I mean to eliminate the
smoke, and to conquer man. Per-
haps we may reduce the world to
a land of flowers and bees in the
end.”

“Would we live to see it?”
asked Lucille.

“I doubt it,” I replied. “But
during your lives we can do
much.”

I outlined to them the plan I
had conceived of making my
colony a nest of incorrigible, un-
manageable and fighting demons
as a first step in resisting the
meddling of man. Questions were
asked and answered, and I found
myself surrounded by a group of
bees that held me in the highest
esteem.

Conferences with my new
Owos were held each night for
three nights, and it may perhaps
seem strange to the reader that
not a great deal was accom-
plished in the way of additional
planning for future combat. The
seeds of future ideas were being
sown, however, for I was rather
bothering over the fact that bees
have to die when they sting. With
my own progeny coming on, I

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

121

hated to see them die even a few
days before their time.

O N the third day after the
emergence of the first of my
brood, I found myself over a
section of comb in which I had
laid drone eggs that first day I
was in my new abode. Whereas
worker bees take 21 days to
emerge from the cells as young
bees from the time the egg is
laid, drones take 24 days, and I
knew that these drones were
about ready to crawl out. There
was evidence that several were
already in the process, and I de-
cided to wait around a bit and
start them on the road to learn-
ing. My loathing for the lazy
drones would probably subside
with my own drones showing
signs of intelligence. I might
even put them to work in some
fashion.

The emergence of the first
drone was considerably different
from the emergence of the first
worker. This drone, which I aft-
erward named John, seemed to
look me over calmly enough be-
fore “speaking.”

“Masoul seems to be thinking
hard with me as a subject. What
is the ti-ouble, Masoul?”

I was surprised at this com-
ment, and taken somewhat off
guard. This drone seemed to ex-
hibit even more intelligence than
my new workers, and I was un-
prepared for it. In a moment.

however, the solution was clear,
and I changed my discourse of
enlightenment to this drone ac-
cordingly. I had entirely over-
looked the fact that a drone bee
is a development from an un-
fertilized egg, and that this bee
in no wise owed his development
to an immediate father. Such be-
ing the case, he took his heredity
from me alone, and was conse-
quently less cramped in his hu-
man intelligence characteristics
than his sisters. What a remark-
able situation! I realized on the
instant that I might make great
use of that.

In the evening, I called a con-
ference of newly emerged drones.

“Well, boys, how do you like
it?” I asked.

“Not bad,” replied one I had
named Paul. “We are drones,
with instinct to tell us that we
are men of leisure, fed free of
charge by our worker sisters,
and with intelligence to make the
most of leisure. I advocate reor-
ganization of colony life, with
worker bees to put on shows for
our benefit.!’

“Well, I’ll be — ,” I burst out.

“Never mind Paul, Masoul,”
said John. “I think he is a misfit
— a black sheep in the family. He
had no sooner emerged than he
started griping about the
cramped quarters in his cell.
Said he wished the workers
would learn to build drone cells
a little larger, and that his won-

122

AMAZING STORIES

derful form might have experi-
enced a fuller development in
larger quarters.”

“Should I decide that Paul
needs attention from the workers
he holds so lightly in his esteem,
he will not be so handsome,” I
replied. “Minus a wing or two
torn off by their mandibles, and
with a shrunken abdomen from
lack of food, his form will be
nothing to brag about.”

M ASOUL,” said another I
chose to call Fritz, “I have
talked with several of my broth-
ers since emergence and we are
of the same mind. We have in-
stinct that tells us what is ex-
pected of us, which is nothing, of
course, there being no mating to
be done*. But. Masoul, the intel-
ligence we possess is to our lik-
ing, and we find that we do not
wish to be considered lazy in-
dividuals with no aim in life.
Could you, Masoul, find us any-
thing to do?”

“You did not come equipped
with physical attributes that
would enable you to do many
things the workers do,” I an-
swered. “You have no pollen bas-
kets on your legs for the gather-

* A virgin queen takes her mating flight
when she is from five to eight days old,
weather permitting. She soars high into the
air and mates with a single drone, this drone
dying instantly- in the act. On her mating
flight she receives enough of the male sperms
to do her for the rest of her useful life,
the quantity of individual sex cells being
measured by the millions. Only rarely has
a queen been known to take a second mating
flight.

ing of pollen, and, for similar
reasons, you can not gather nec-
tar from the fields. Without wax-
secretion glands, you can not
build comb. But I think I can
find inside work for you that will
help the city by the removal of
that many workers from those
duties.”

“Let us hear, Masoul.”

“You have not yet flown. You
will leave the hive in a few days
to try your wings in flight, and
make them stronger. You will
note the wonderful buzz that you
will make with your wings, for
you are strong. Therein lies your
only chance of being helpful at
present. You shall use your
wings for fanning, and with your
magnificent wings keep the city
ventilated to perfection. Is not
all this a worthy occupation for
you?”

“That sounds like work,” la-
mented Paul.

The next day Paul started on a
diet of nothing, followed by
nothing, at my orders. He was
dragged from the hive three
days later by. two capable Owos
and left to die some distance
away. I had no time for such
characters.

T HE following evening I talked
with a considerably larger
number of drones.

“More possibilities are unfold-
ing before me,” I began. “It fur-
thermore gives me great comfort

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

123

to be able to talk things over
with you, for your intelligence
is freer from the chains of in-
stinct that bind my Owos. Let us
work together for the carrying
out of our plans to make our city
supreme over humanity.”

“We are most willing, Ma-
soul,” said Omar. “Even though
we take heredity direct from you,
you are still greater than we.
Dictate, Masoul, so that we may
follow with the gift of your in-
telligence.”

“Omar, your words are wise,
and yet too modest. If I shall dic-
tate, let it be with consideration,
and should you perceive that
which I do not perceive, then, by
all means, give me the benefit of
your perception.”

“Masoul, you welcome free dis-
cussion with us concerning your
plans?”

“Most heartily, Omar.”

“Then, Masoul, what plan
have you for your successor?
Instinct tells me that you will
live not always, and that, in the
to-morrow of nectars, your Ma-
soul daughter will mate with one
of my yet unborn brothers. What
shall we do?”

To tell the truth about it, I had
not given this much considera-
tion, and the question was some-
what staggering. But, for the
sake of wholesome respect, I had
to keep up appearances.

“A problem of to-morrow’s
nectars, Omar, requiring thought

between now and then. I have
not yet determined fully. Think
about it, Omar, and give me the
benefit of your thoughts.”

So I successfully parried the
question. But my relief was short
lived, for Fritz was as bright as
Omar, and he absorbed my at-
tention.

“Masoul, the , workers of the
guard die when they sting the
man?”

“It is so, Fritz. It is for this
reason that I form the guard of
older bees who are doomed to die
soon anyway.”

I was distinctly proud of this
idea.

“It is wise, Masoul, and your
mind is great,” continued Fritz.
“But why do the Owos die? We
have no stings and we do not
know.”

“It is because the Owo’s stings
are barbed. They loose the stings
in the flesh of the man they
sting. The injury causes them to
die. My sting is not barbed.”

“It is unfortunate,” comment-
ed Fritz sadly. “It is not right
they should- die.”

I was disturbed again. Some-
thing in the lamenting tone of
Fritz, as he regretted the fate of
his sisters of the guard, seemed
to imply that he seemed to think
that I should be able to remedy
the situation, or that he would
be distinctly glad if I could. That
was enough. I brought the con-
ference to a close for the evening,

124

AMAZING STORIES

but not before appointing Fritz
and Omar as my immediate as-
sistants and advisors.

CHAPTER VI

T HE following day was his-
torical in my existence in the
colony. The smoke came about
midday. At first, there was only
a trivial attack. A few blasts of
smoke at the entrance caused me
dire discomfort, but they were of
short duration. My first two com-
panies of bees went into action,
and 25 bees from the two units
died from losing their stings. I
did not wonder that the man re-
treated, but he was game, and I
marveled at his courage. He re-
turned in a short while, this time
heavily dressed, wearing bee veil
and gloves, and we suffered at
his hands. When he was through,
and I thought I was half dead
from smoke, we found that rob-
bing had taken place, and that
we had lost much ripened and
capped over honey. My rage
knew no bounds.

When evening came, I was an
excited leader over the confer-
ence, and this time the confer-
ence was graced by the presence
of a number of my own Owos se-
lected with my utmost care. I
began by addressing my remarks
to the group.

“We have once more suffered
at the hands of man. We have
taken our toll in a measure, but

he has taken his toll. The man
does not rejoice over his stings,
and we have begun the war. His
toll was heavy, for he has taken
much honey that would have
nourished as well when the nec-
tar is no more, and the cold
causes us to huddle together. We
have lost our first battle with
him, but there shall be more in
which we shall not lose. It is
time to cany the war to him;
not let him bring it to us. Hear
my words.

“Fritz, you were sad that your
worker sisters die as they sting
the man, and you caused me
much thought. I, too, am sad. It
must not be. We can not always
fight man so if our success be no
greater than today. Therefore, I
say, the workers of the guard
shall no longer die. They shall no
longer lose their stings, and ev-
ery worker shall be a fighter. We
shall carry the battle to the man.
We shall seek him out and sting
him. We shall attack him in
great droves and seek to kill
him. We shall seek out his wom-
an and' sting her, and his chil-
dren. They can not wear the veil
from dawn until evening, and we
shall kill them if we can. If we
can not kill them, we shall drive
them away.

“This is my plan. My Owos
will not die. If their stings have
no barbs. Therefore, we must re-
move the barbs. I know the way.”

There was a chorus of ques-

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

125

tions from many in the group.

“The way is easy, and yet it
may be hard.”

M Y proposition was to assign
a certain number of work-
ers, say twelve, to the duty of
finding a sand bed, and, having
found it, to bring to the hive
large numbers of sand grains
for my inspection. From these, I
would pick two having sharp
edges of the most perfect form
suited to the need, the remainder
to be carried away. Having se-
lected two suitable grains, I
would then assign workers to
the duty of mounting these se-
curely in one corner of the hive
where they would be readily ac-
cessible and yet obscure to the
man. The mounting was to be ac-
complished by the use of propo-
lis, a gummy material obtained
from the buds of poplar and oth-
er trees and known as “bee-glue”
which is used for sealing cracks
and for other purposes. It would
require the utmost care, for the
sand grains were to be mounted
with meticulous accuracy, the
spacing between the cutting
edges probably requiring an ac-
curacy down to one one hundred
thousandth part of an inch. Aft-
er the sand grains were mounted
properly, the next step would be
to have each worker bee in turn
thrust her stinger between the
sand grains and shave off the
barbs. Any worker could then

sting the man with impunity and
repeatedly. My guard could be
chosen from bees of any age,
and the entire population of the
colony would serve as reserve
forces.”

It was not at all difficult for
me to sell this idea to my fol-
lowers, but the matter of making
clear to the workers just what
sand grains are, or where they
would be found, was extremely
difficult. In the end I made ar-
rangements to fly from the hive
with a limited number of work-
ers the next day, all instincts to
the contrary notwithstanding,
and personally take part in the
search for a bed of sand.

Luck was with me the follow-
ing day, for I found a suitable
bed of sand in a creek bed in a
relatively short time, and my ac-
companying workers brought
back dozens of grains on the first
trip. Not one of these was suita-
ble, however, and I detailed fifty
workers to the duty of bringing
sand grains to the hive.

It required, two days’ time to
find two grains of sand that had
sharp cutting edges in a straight
line sufficiently long, and I was
heartily glad when this step was
over. I had looked at sand grains
with my poor vision and had
utilized my sense of location to
such an extent that I was most
thoroughly worn out, for I had
endeavored to carry on my usual
duties of egg laying at the same

126

AMAZING STORIES

time. Little did I then suspect,
however, that the hard part was
just about to begin.

TDEES are credited with mar-
velous accuracy in building
their combs with cells in the
hexagonal shape, of given size,
and with certain angles to give
the greatest economy of wax to-
gether with maximum strength.
I had found the comb work in the
hive to be marvelous, especially
considering those cells in which
I laid eggs, and I had relied
upon this accuracy of workman-
ship to make the matter of
mounting the sand grains a sim-
ple matter. I was badly disap-
pointed. Bees have built combs
for ages, and instinct tells them
how to build it well. Bees have
never mounted sand grains by
means of propolis for the purpose
I intended them, and they knew
nothing about it. Six of my own
Owos labored long and hard at
the troublesome task and made
small progress. Time and again
the mounting was finished only
to be torn down and started
over-, either because the sand
grains were too far apart or too
close together. More than one of
my Owos would have lost their
lives in trying out these shears
when it was thought that the
perfect dimensions had been ob-
tained, had it not been that my
intelligent Owos were able to un-
do what they had done and re-

move one grain when it was
found that the experimenting
bee had hopelessly bound her
sting in the shears. The first
day of failure made me extreme-
ly impatient, but the following
day I regained some of my pa-
tience and resolutely assigned a
detail to the duty of completing
the shears whenever it could,
working continuously on this one
job. In the meantime, I had
other details to think about.

The somewhat disturbing
thought that perhaps I might
not win in my battle with man
kept bobbing up. The fact that
man may provide himself with
veil and gloves to protect his face
and hands and dress heavily to
avoid stings on the body gave me
no little concern. The man had
deliberately robbed my colony
after twenty five of my guards
had stung him. A thousand bees
might sting him without his
safeguards, now that I planned
to remove the barbs from their
stings, but if my fighters could
not get to him, the battle would
be lost. On the other hand, he
could not wear these safeguards
all day long and each day, and
my bees could sting him freely
when his safeguards were off.
But what reaction would come?
I could guess the answer to that.
Knowing that this colony was
becoming incorrigible, he would
in all probability obtain a new
queen from a professional queen-

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

127

breeder and introduce it to my
colony after he had searched me
out and killed me. This thought
at once modified my plan of ac-
tion.

T>RIEFLY, I must not carry
the battle to the man until I
was fully prepared. I would pro-
ceed about the business of remov-
ing barbs from the stings of
each and every worker bee, but I
must wait until all were my own
offspring so that I might be more
able to instruct them in the art
of fighting. I believed that I
could teach my half-human-
minded bees to crawl inside the
man’s clothing and sting him at
such times as he was heavily
dressed. This was one point, but
it was not sufficient.

Man is obstinate, and hates to
be outdone by animal or insect.
My ultimate fate would be to die
at the hand of man, but so great
was my hate for man that I did
not care. When I was gone, how-
ever, I would not be able to carry
on the battle; therefore, I must
plan for the future about which
Omar had asked. Not only plan,
but I must act now, and the ac-
tion required that new queens,
Masouls, be reared at once. I
would send these queens from
the hive in swarms to establish
homes in hollow trees and caves
so that my blood would not be
lost, and so that the battle to
last for years would be carried

forward by an annually increas-
ing number of colonies. Personal-
ly, I preferred to remain in close
contact with man, fighting him
until death, and I would not fol-
low the instinct that directed
that the old queen leave with the
swarm. Then the matter of the
characteristics of my Masoul
daughter occurred to me.

She would not be as I. Being
raised from an egg exactly simi-
lar to those that produced my
half human-minded Owos, she
would be as they, and would
have only half of my capabilities.
But then the remarkable side of
it occurred to me. In mating with
one of my own drones, she would
have offspring even better than
mine, for they, taking one half
of one half from their mother
and a full one-half from their
drone father, would be, I might
say, three fourths human mind-
ed. What an idea ! Let us rear a
new queen, keep her in the colo-
ny for a time, and rear yet an-
other queen from her eggs to
mate with one of my own drones.
Thus would be produced a queen
having three fourths of my capa-
bilities who would produce off-
spring having seven-eighths of
my capabilities. This fraction
could be increased to almost
unity after many generations,
and it would not matter at all
that I died. I settled on this plan
immediately, determined to study
new queens and new brood in-

128

AMAZING STORIES

tently, until such degree of per-
fection was reached that I would
feel safe in directing the casting
of a swarm.

Before giving further atten-
tion' to the construction of the
barb shears, I personally attend-
ed to the matter of directing the
construction of a queen-cell. I
selected the most perfect appear-
ing egg from a large number,
and directed that a queen cell*
of the largest, most perfect form
possible be constructed, and that
every care be exercised in giving
the developing larva the proper
food. This work had been under
way for a week, and it was almost
time to cap the queen-cell, when
I again visited the site of the
barb shears.

T\rO progress had been made

’ %hatsoever. The shears had
been' reconstructed perhaps thou-
sand's of times, and my half-hu-
man-minded Owos were showing
a real characteristic of humanity
as opposed to the bees. They were
becoming discouraged. I found it
necessary to take a hand, not
only to accomplish results, but to
maintain respect. I studied their

* Natural queen-cells are usually con-
structed by the bees along the lower edges
of combs or in the corners, and they point
downward. Numerous queen-cell cups, which
are the bases of such cells, will usually be
found in any colony. When the bees are ready
to rear a queen, either the queen deposits a
fertilized egg in one of these cups, or the
workers transfer a fertilized egg from a
worker cell to a cup. From then on, it is
a matter of feeding the developing larva the
properly proportioned food and building the
cell down to enclose the larvae.

methods and then conceived the
means.

I directed an Owo to find a
dead Owo and bring her back to
the hive. This being done, I di-
rected that she be dissected to
the extent that her sting could
be removed, and this was done. I
then directed that one Owo grasp
the base of the sting between her
mandibles and draw it back and
forth between the sand grains
as other Owos manipulated the
propolis mounting in such fash-
ion as to gradually bring one
sand grain up to the other with
the sting between. I stood by to
watch the results. Gradually,
the two sand grains were
brought closer together until
there was no clearance between
them and the sting of the dead
bee. Then contact was made, and
a minute quantity of the barbs
was sheared off. Still closer con-
tact was made, and every last
vestige of the barbs was re-
moved. I halted the work, direct-
ed that the grains be securely
fastened so, and asked for volun-
teers to try the shears. A dozen
stepped forward, thrust their
stings through the shears, and
had the barbs removed without
one iota of ill effect. I rejoiced
that success was mine.

Perhaps half of my colony had
used the shears when the smoke
came again. At the time, I could
not quite account for the manip-
ulation the man made. We had

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

129

already been robbed, and we had
not yet accumulated enough
stores to warrant another rob-
bing. I could only guess that the
man was angry because we were
intractable and was looking us
over for whatever he might find.
He found the queen cell, which
had now been capped, and, to my
extreme disgust and surging
hate, he removed it. If I had
been human, I am sure that I
would have died of brain trouble
of some sort, for my anger, rage,
and hate consumed me. Not only
did the smoke make me as sick
as ever before, but my plans
against the man were retarded
by man’s own hands. I can not
describe it, so the subject may
well be dropped.

There was nothing to do but
start over again, and I directed
the construction of a half dozen
new queen cells in as remote
corners of the combs as possi-
ble. I also directed that, should
the hives be opened again, large
numbers of Owos cluster over
these cells and hide them from
view as much as possible. In the
meantime, every Owo passed her
sting through the shears and
was made a fighter of no mean
possibilities.

Under the stress of disappoint-
ment, hate, and foiled plans, I
lost my judgment, and directed
that the fight be carried to the
man at once with barbless stings
in the hope of killing this partic-

ular man at once. I directed that
a company of two hundred bees
seek out man and his kind every
hour of the day and sting him
unmercifully. The havoc this
campaign wrought I learned
about fully at a later date. My
wife and my children were forced
to stay indoors, but my father
took action.

In justifying my action, I con-
tented myself with the thought
that I had taken it up with Omar,
Fritz, and others in my council
of drones and obtained their as-
sent. I overlooked the fact that
in successfully completing the
barb shears, and in planning for
the breeding of my successor, I
had so completely won their con-
fidence and respect that they had
virtually become what humans
call “yes men.” They regarded
me as wise beyond comprehen-
sion, and thought that I could
not fail. They sought to aid me
in carrying out my plans rather
than in looking for possible de-
fects. But perhaps it was better
so.

T HE day came very shortly
when I realized that my fa-
ther would not give up an inch
in his battle with my brood. The
new queen cells were only fairly
well under way when he came
again with the stench of rolling,
billowing clouds of smoke, and
dressed to perfection as a guard
against stings. I was shortly

130

AMAZING STORIES

very nearly unconscious, for I
had never before experienced
such terribly thick and complete-
ly awful clouds of smoke. They
rolled about me and obscured my
vision, and so distressed my
breathing that I was incapable
of any degree of muscular ac-
tivity. In this condition, I was
barely conscious that the hive
was being most thoroughly
searched for my presence, and, in
the end, I was found.

In the few short seconds when
a person realizes that death is
inevitable a myriad of thoughts
can race through his mind, It
was so in my case. I saw the ap-
proach of a bright, shining tool,
and I realized that the end was
near. I recalled that bright tool.
It was a pair of thin nosed, nickle
plated pliers. I had used those
same pliers, in company with my
father, in picking the queen from
the combs that my own body had
replaced. Now it was my turn!
My father probably reasoned
that the offspring of the new
queen would be more easily han-
dled. There was no reason why
he should not think this, for or-
dinarily, the bees we kept were
not at all ill-tempered. He very
likely thought that, while my
parent stock was probably satis-
factory, I was a freak that pro-
duced near demons instead of
bees.

I had perhaps a split second to
think these things out as I saw

the approach of the pliers. I was
too weak to run or fly. I attempt-
ed to give orders to those work-
ers near me to never accept the
new queen he would introduce,
but I was too late. The pliers
closed on my thorax, and I was
lifted from the comb.

I did not meet instant death.
The principal contents of my tho-
rax were muscles for driving my
legs and wings which were at-
tached thereto. The heart and
other vital organs reposed in my
long, slender abdomen and these
were unaffected. While I knew
that death would ultimately come
as a result of the complete crush-
ing of my thorax, I could only
suffer untold agony at the mo-
ment. When cast aside, I fell,
mortally injured, in front of the
entrance to the hive.

F ROM the point where I lay I
watched the activities as I suf-
fered in silence. The heavenly
fresh air on the outside, totally
free from the strangling fumes
I could see emanating from the
smoker, was a blessing indeed,
and cleared my senses. I saw my
guard fight the man and was
proud of them. They flew before
him in droves obscuring his vi-
sion, and retired for the moment
only when greeted by a blast of
smoke. I could see the man wince
and slap at his body, and I knew
that some of my beloved Owos
had penetrated his clothing, to

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

131

meet their deaths in the per-
formance of the duties I had as-
signed them. I did not relish the
thought of dying and leaving
such loyal subjects behind. I had
learned to love them, just as I
had learned to hate mankind.

I was almost gone when the
man retired. I was missed in a
short while, and a number of my
faithful Owos, searching for me,
came upon me on the ground. A
little while longer and they would
have been too late.

“Oh, Masoul, what has he
done?” asked one of my most
trusted Owos.

“He has killed me, Owo,” I re-
plied. “In a short while I die.”

“Then what can we do?”

“Has he placed a new Masoul
in the city?” I asked.

“That he has, and she smells
not right. We have tried to kill
her, but we can not reach her.”

“You will reach her in a few
days.' and then you must kill her,
even though her smell is good.
You understand? You must kill
her.”

“Masoul, we may kill her, but
he has destroyed our queen cells.
What shall we do for Masoul?”

I thought a moment before re-
plying, and when I “spoke”
again, the clouds of death were
hovering near.

“Owo, my faithful Owo, hear
me. I laid eggs to-day, and in
three days they hatch. After one
or two days, the young hatched

larva is not good with which to
rear Masoul. You must work fast.
I charge you, Owo, select a great
many Owos and fly to the woods.
Choose a hollow tree that is re-
mote from man and hard for
man to find. In that tree build
comb rapidly ere the three days
expire, even if it be but a small
amount. As soon as this is done,
choose three or four eggs and fly
with them to your new city, and
rear Masoul there. Take with
you my drones. One of them shall
mate with new Masoul. When
Masoul lays eggs, come back to
this city, and persuade every
Owo and drone to fly with you
to the new city. Carry with you
all the honey you may. Rob this
city for the benefit of the new.
Abandon this city when the new
Masoul shall lay eggs. Carry
with you in your minds those
things I have taught you, and
carry on the fight against man.”

If I had been speaking by the
use of vocal cords and respira-
tory apparatus, I am sure that
the last few words would have
come in gasps, or perhaps not
been said at all. Sixth sense was
failing me even as I endeavored
to emanate the last of these
thoughts, and I was not sure
that they were all properly com-
prehended. I “heard” no reply,
for the dark clouds that were
hemming me in settled closer
until it seemed that they cov-
ered my pain-racked body with

132

AMAZING STORIES

downy softness, and I went to
sleep — blessed, restful sleep.

CHAPTER VII

I DO not know, of course, just
how long the reverse transfer
took, but it seemed to me but an
instant before I was again con-
scious, and in human form. I
opened my eyes, cautiously, half
fearfully.

Directly in front of me a few
hundred feet away I saw a rath-
er large, red sandstone building.
There was a helpful sign across
the entrance to disclose its iden-
tity. It read: “Dr. Ray’s Sani-
tarium.” There was a large, beau-
tiful, shady lawn between me
and the building, with here and
there a patient in a wheel chair
with attendant nurses. Restrict-
ing my gaze to my own vicinity,
I found that I, too, was in a
wheel chair, and that within a
very few feet there was a quite
good looking, white-clad nurse
calmly reading a magazine.

It was several minutes before
I ventured upon a conversation,
for I wanted to make sure that I
would be quite calm myself. At
length I thought that my poise
would be secure.

“Good morning, Nurse,” I
said. “Would you mind telling
me just why I am here?”

I have never seen anyone so
surprised in my life. She dropped
her magazine instantly, and

came, I think, very near to faint-
ing.

“Why — why yes! No! How da
you feel?” she gasped.

“I feel quite hungry, Miss. I’d
like to have a big beefsteak
smothered with onions. What are
the chances?”

By this time the nurse was on
the road to recovery.

“Your chances are excellent,”
she replied, smiling. “There
won’t be a one of us that won’t
be so darned glad to see you feed-
ing yourself that we won’t know
what to do. You have been the
most helpless man for the last
two months that I ever saw. In
fact, you have been nothing more
than a lump of clay with life in
it, and you would have starved
to death if we had not resorted
to forced feeding. But come on.
You are going to see Dr. Ray be-
fore you do anything else.”

My rides in a wheel chair have
been distinctly limited. If I ever
have to ride in another one, I
hope it won’t be quite so fast.
Nurse broke the speed limit
across the lawn.

Dr. Ray was quite astonished
at my instant recovery, and
asked all manner of questions,
which I side-stepped to the best
of my ability. He became exas-
perated.

“It would be a great help to us
if you would give us some sort
of inkling as to what happened,”
he snapped. “It might help us

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

133

some in our treatment of New-
ton Ware.”

“Oh, is he here, too?” I asked,
instantly.

“He most certainly is. The two
of you completely out were found
in his laboratory in the midst of
an array of broken equipment.
You had apparently had quite a
struggle, and we are quite sure
that either you hit him on the
head with some heavy equipment,
or else he fell into it with tre-
mendous force. He has been a
much better patient than you,
however. Most of the time he is
fairly rational, but a part of the
time he sits around with his in-
separable notebook, studying it,
and mumbling about a constant
for a queen and ‘a period of five
minutes, no longer.’ When he
does that, he sees nothing, hears
nothing, and looks very much as
if he has a terrible headache. His
trouble is undoubtedly caused by
the blow on the head.”

“Perhaps it might help if I
could see Mr. Ware and talk with
him,” I suggested. “A sudden
shock, you know.”

“I wanted to try that.”

YY7HEN Newton was brought
’’ in I looked at him intently,
spoke his name quietly, and con-
tinued to look at him.

It was apparent at once that
my presence, actions, and voice
were having an effect. Newton’s
eyes were perfectly dull when he

entered the room, but now there
seemed to be a trace of return-
ing brightness appearing by
flashes. The struggle within him
went on for five minutes before
the victory was won, but, in the
end, his eyes became clear,
bright, and steady.

“Well!” he exclaimed. “How.
did you get back?”

“I am asking you,” I replied.
“The queen was killed, and I
thought I was dying, but I did-
n’t. I came-to out on the grounds
a few minutes ago.”

Newton grabbed his notebook
in feverish haste and studied it
intently. Dr. Ray looked worried,
but did not interfere. While New-
ton was studying. Dr. Ray asked
me, “What queen? What is he
talking about?” but I paid him
no heed. I was too much interest-
ed in my friend.

Ware put the notebook away
with a very sad expression.

“I remember now what hap-
pened. The experiment was suc-
cessful. But my formulas, unfor-
tunately, did. not tell me what
would happen upon mixing small
per cents of different intelli-
gences. I transferred you about
98%, leaving 2% to insure the
life of your body, while I trans-
ferred the queen only 5%, leaving
95% for you to ride in on top of
and make use of. How did you
get along?”

“Splendidly. I understand a lot
of things now. The 95% was a

134

AMAZING STORIES

great help. But how did 1 get
along?”

“You got along horribly,” he
answered. “You went wild. I
tried to control you and preserve
the equipment, but I failed. The
last thing that I can remember
is that I fell violently as the re-
sult of a tremendous push. You
had the strength of a mad man.”

“Dr. Ray says the equipment
was badly disrupted. That being
the case, can you explain how I
got back?” I asked.

“I can remember that much.
Your intelligence was not firmly
bound into her body in the same
sense that it would have been had
you been born in it. When the
body died, you were released.
Since your own body still lived,
your mind probably made the re-
turn trip with the speed of
light.”

Newton’s face fell as he con-
tinued.

“But that is the end of the ex-
perimentation. There will be no
more transfei-s. The particular
inspiration for the conception
and interpretation of these for-
mulas, you once told me I had, is
gone, and I do not understand
them. In some strange way, I
seem to know that I shall never
recover that inspiration.”

“See if you can remember this
one feature about it,” I said,
somewhat nervously. “Am I,
now, carrying o% queen in my
brain?”

I THOUGHT surely that he was
going to relapse, he looked so
distressed, and I was sorry that
I had said anything. The strug-
gle within him must have lasted
a minute.

“I am sure I do not know,” he
said. “You will have to deter-
mine that for yourself, if you
can. Let’s go home and forget it.”

Not until then did we realize
that we had an audience, so in-
tent had we been on our discus-
sion. Unfortunately for us, Dr.
Ray had heard every word and
understood very little. He insist-
ed upon an explanation, and we
refused to give it. He kept us
three days before he would re-
lease us with a clean bill of
health, and he only released us
then, after I had given him my
reluctant promise to send him a
written account of the whole
story.

My reunion with my family
was joyous in the extreme. They
had practically given me up as a
hopeless case, even though they
knew they had placed me in the
care of the most competent phy-
sician in the country for what
they thought was a mental dis-
order.

I found that my colony of bees
had become so ferocious that my
father had moved them to the
farthest corner of the farm a
mile from the house. I visited
them, wearing a veil, as soon as
I could with decency excuse my-

THE COUNCIL OF DRONES

135

self from my rejoicing family.

I sat down by the side of the
hive wherein I had my abode.
Bees flew about me in clouds, and
I was forced to keep my hands in
my pockets. In a measure, I was
sad. Sixth sense was gone, and
I could not communicate with
them. Perhaps, I reflected, if I
thought hard enough they might
sense it.

“Owos,” I thought, with the
very utmost concentration,
“please do not do it. I, Masoul,
wish you not to. Do not sting me,
for I am Masoul returned to hu-
manity. I will take care of you
and see that you enter the winter
with bounteous stores. I will not
use smoke when I visit you. You
may even rear a new Masoul in
your own city, and we shall work
together in harmony. Do you
hear me, Owos?”

The reward for my effort was
several sharp stings. Several of
the bees had penetrated my cloth-
ing, and, with barbless stingers,

were dealing me misery. I was
forced to slap at them until I had
killed them. I left the swarm
then, knowing that I could never
again communicate with them,
and that, as a human, my work
was cut out for me. The colony
died that day as the result of
poisoning with carbon bisulphide
gas. I burned all that remained
when the asphyxiation was com-
plete.

T HIS is my story as written for
Dr. Ray. Since he is to read it,
I may as well give it to the world.
While you are reading it, I shall
be getting together my beekeep-
ing equipment.

They tell me that times are
getting better and that I could
probably find employment if I
tried. In fact, Newton Ware has
found a very good position for
himself. As for myself — well, I
am just not interested. I am a
beekeeper for life.

THE END

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136

AMAZING STORIES

SPECTROSCOPE

by S. E. COTTS

Daybreak — 2250 A.D. By Andre
Norton. 182 pp. Ace Books. Pa-
per: 354.

This is a reprint, but I’ll report
on it here as I missed it before,
and I will always take the time to
read an Andre Norton novel.
After indulging myself I can
happily announce that my time
wasn’t wasted. It is definitely
one of her best. If I have any
gripe, it is not with the writing,
but with the fact that the book
was retitled. It was originally
published as Star Man’s Son.
This practice of changing names
can have no other purpose than
to gull the unwary into purchas-
ing an old product in a new box.
It is an old trick, but one which
I had usually associated more
with Grade C movies than with
Grade A book's. A superior prod-
uct needs no excuses in order to
make a reappearance.

Gripes aside, this is a wonder-
ful story. Set some 200 years
after the near-destruction of the
world in a nuclear holocaust, it

deals less with the reasons for
the tragedy and more with the
way life and customs have been
carried on. We are introduced to
three main groupings ; the farm-
ers, the herders, and the seekers
after knowledge. The hero be-
longs to the last category, though
he has been denied full member-
ship because he is a mutant. The
story deals with his attempts to
win recognition for himself as
a gatherer of knowledge and
worthy successor to his father.

One hint to the author might
be in order, however. Miss Nor-
ton need make no apologies for
the fact that she is a woman. She
writes in ;ln almost aggressively
masculine manner. No one would
ever accuse her of frailty or
weakness. The deeds she de-
scribes are robust, with many of
the qualities of the old epic
poems. But her complete exclu-
sion of any romantic tinges, or
indeed, of any characters who
happen to be famale by accident
of birth, is as unrealistic as the

137

work of those authors who do
nothing but write “girlie" tales
%vith a little science thrown in.
Take one man’s word for it, Miss
Norton — the last way to emulate
masculine writing is to be anti-
feminine. So relax and give us
everything in moderation. We’ve
accepted you in the ranks of us
“mighty men,” and there’s noth-
ing more to prove.

The Unsleep. By Diana and Meir
Gillon. 207 pp. Ballantine Books.
Paper: 50 <f.

Dare I suggest that something
is happening to the British? It’s
too early to say yet whether the
changes I’ve observed are due to
a kind of “silly season” that will
burn itself out before long, or
whether they are symptomatic of
a change of life. A short time
ago, this column devoted some
space to The Primal Urge by
Brian Aldiss, a book which I
took, at the time, to be nothing
more than an author’s letting
off of steam for pui-poses of en-
tertainment. It dealt with the
government-sponsored drive to
get all Englishmen equipped
with an Emotional Register so
that people could no longer hide
their feelings for anyone else in
the darkest recesses of their
souls. Now along comes another
book (also from Ballantine —
maybe it’s a publisher’s plot!)
with English authors and with
equally earth-shaking news for

all Englishmen. Government
clinics are now dispensing Sta-
Wake to all who want it. “Don’t
waste your life,” booms the TV.
“Sta-Wake will banish forever
the need to replenish your ener-
gies with time-consuming sleep.”
jThe problems England has faced
in her long history seem infini-
tesimal compared to the ones
these two books foist upon her.

Though Sta-Wake seems just
the thing for the drudging Eng-
lish millions, it brings a whole
host of problems. Once taken,
there is no known antidote. And
what to do with all that leisure
time once it’s obtained? And
what about the bed manufactur-
ers? And what will happen to
the stalwarts who hold out
against it?

One such stalwart, named Pe-
ter Gregory, is the hero of the
book. But before long, he finds
that his decision has brought
him much more than he bar-
gained for. His wife is, at first,
submissive (which her PQ chart
said was her type), but then she
rebels and gets her shot, com-
pleting his sense of isolation
from his fellows. She joins the
wild merry-go-round of activity
in order to fill her time — first
with parties, then sex, gambling,
and finally education and cul-
ture.

As far as the handling of all
this in the Gillons’ book, they
manage to keep their unruly sub-

138

AMAZING STORIES

ject very well under control.
However, in their effort to have
a real story with a certain
amount of conflict and not just a
single-edged satire, they intro-
duce several other threads. Ab-
stractly speaking, this is a good
thing, but in the present in-
stance it has not been done too
successfully. The various parts
block each other’s progress, and
I think the book would have ben-
efited from either the elimina-
tion or reduction of the parts
where Peter Gregory takes to
writing fiction. For the most
part, though, it’s an enjoyable
book and a well-written one by
two welcome new voices in the
science fiction field.

Here England has been duti-
fully concerning herself these
days with the soundness of the
pound and the question of sta-
bility within the Commonwealth
versus stability within the Com-
mon Market, and all this time,
an insidious danger has been
lurking right under her nose —
not Young Men who are Angry
(they have already gotten their
share of the home front public-
ity), but the Young Men who are
Irreverent. How many people
do I know who have stood up
staunchly in the face of crisis,
but who melt at the first flick of
ridicule! We extend the welcome
mat to all such Irreverents, par-
ticularly if they're from someone
else’s country.

The Voices of Time. By J. G.

Ballard. 158 pp. Berkley Medal-
lion Books. Paper: 50 4 .

Another (and a very different)
look at what might happen when
the need for sleep has been abol-
ished, is furnished by one of
J. G. Ballard’s short stories.
Called “Manhole 69,” it traces a
few nights in the lives of three
men who have been relieved of
the need for sleep by a delicate
brain operation. '

My first acquaintance with the
work of Mr. Ballard was in a
Judy Merril anthology which
contained a story titled “The
Sound Sweep.” This followed the
strange, sad relationship be-
tween a mute and a retired opera
singer. It is also included in the
current anthology, and my opin-
ion remains the same — that hei - e
is a highly original story fi-om a
talented new writer (in its poign-
ance, not unlike the story of the
deaf mute and his strange de-
pendents in Carson McCullers’
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter).
It is very revealing, however, to
see this story among Mr. Bal-
lai-d’s other ones here. For it
turns out that “The Sound
Sweep” is not at all typical of his
output on two gi’ounds : tone and
quality.

As far as the difference in tone
goes, my remarks are not to be
taken as a form of criticism,
merely as comparison. Though
“The Sound Sweep” is not a hap-

THE SPECTROSCOPE

139

py story, it is positively gay
when taken next to the others.
For they are almost completely
dark and grim, or at the least,
filled with tension. For instance,
a man slowly goes insane, three
men cannot sleep any more, a
man produces duplicates of him-
self with tragic results, etc.

iV.

As far as quality goes, only
one other of the seven included
can match “The Sound Sweep”
in its perfect blend of ideas and
realization of them. It is called
“Deep End” and it concerns a
man’s decision to stay on Earth
even though it has become a dy-
ing planet. The other stories,
though they show clearly the au-
thor’s obvious gift for writing,
have too great a disparity be-
tween the size of their concep-
tions and the extent of their ful-
fillments. (Not to mention the
difficulties even the most experi-
enced writers face when trying
to fit large ideas into the short
story form ! ) It takes much more
than grandiose prose about
“drifting epochs,” “aisles of
light” and “chasmic eddies” to
make a vision. First must come
a clear philosophical concept;
then, if the Muse is on one’s side,
the words will grow organically
from this concept. I’m not too
worried, however. I suspect that
time and the maturing process
will solve this problem for Mr.
Ballard. For, as I said earlier, he
did solve it in one story, “Deep

End,” and this is not the kind of
problem that gets solved by acci-
dent — even once.

Planet of the Damned. By Har-
ry Harrison. 135 pp. Bantam
Books. Paper: W<i.

This is Mr. Harrison’s third
book of which I am aware. One I
just reviewed last month, but
Planet of the Damned bears little
relation to it. It is much more
like his first novel, Death-world.
Both of these novels treated of
planets whose environments
were so hostile as to make hu-
man life as we know it unsup-
portable. Given a situation like
this, many writers would invent
a scientifically-minded people
who lived in airdomes- or under-
ground, etc. But not Harry Har-
rison. His people are rugged,
and with no proper equipment
and the most primitive of tools,
they set out to adapt themselves
to the worst their land has to of-
fer. They never attempt to mod-
ify the exterior ; they themselves
must change — or else.

This is fine as long as the au-
thor sticks to a straight narra-
tive. But when the time comes
for an explanation of how these
adaptations are made, whether it
be biologically or ecologically,
the author seems on weaker
ground. It is unfortunate that
Mr. Harrison’s solutions are not
as original as the problems he
sets up.

140

AMAZING STORIES

Dear Cele:

I have read with great pleas-
ure and with a whole series of
modest blushes the S. F. Profile
of myself written by the amiable
and flattering pen of Sam Mos-
kowitz.

However, an error slipped into
the piece which involves someone
other than myself, and does him
a grave injustice. I feel that I
must correct this and I would
appreciate it, therefore, if you
would print this letter in your
reader’s column.

Mr. Moskowitz tells the story
of how I provided an item for
Donald A. Wollheim free of
charge and was then threat-
ened by John W. Campbell, Jr.,
editor of astounding science
fiction with a blackballing un-
less I obtained payment.

This incident (which took
place in late 1940) is a bit more
complicated than it appears to
be in the Profile. However the
point is that the editor who did
the threatening was not Mr.
Campbell. It was another man,
now dead, whose name is not
important.

Let me state as flatly as I can
that Mr. John W. Campbell, Jr.
has never, never, never threat-
ened to reject my stories for any
reason whatever, except for that
of being unworthy of publica-
tion. I have known him very well

over a period of nearly a quarter
of a century, and I wish to state
that using his editorial position
as a club is foreign to his nature.
Furthermore, as far as I person-
ally am concerned, in all the
years we have worked together,
John Campbell has been kind-
ness itself to me at all times, and
if I owe my career to anyone, it
is to him.

Isaac Asimov

• Our apologies for an unin-
tended error to Messrs. Asimov
and Campbell.

Dear Editor:

Exactly what was Mr. David
Hadaway trying to prove in his
March letter?

He stated that sf is essentially

141

. . . OR SO YOU SAY

the same now as it was 20 years
ago — he described it as being all
“blood and thunder.” To illus-
trate his debatable point he
pointed out that both featured
stories in the November amaz-
ing were exactly that — “blood
and thunder” action/adventure
yarns.

How low can a person get!
I’m afraid that David Hadaway
drew his conclusions just a little
too quickly for them to be at all
convincing. I’m sure that you at
AMAZING didn’t make any at-
tempt to transform Mr. Maine’s
novel into any kind of a “liter-
ary” effort. It was as you de-
scribed it: “A taut drama of
scientific intrigue.”

Even if that one issue did fit
in with his preconception of sf,
has he not heard of collecting in-
formation from more than one or
two sources before drawing a
conclusion? It seems as if he de-
liberately chose fact to fit his
theory instead of theory to fit
fact.

Using the “Hadaway yard-
stick” then as a tool to measure
sf, we can draw this conclu-
sion (s): “Pawn of the Black
Fleet” = sf = poor characteriza-
tion and “blood and thunder” ac-
tion/adventure. Mr. Hadaway
will have to do some fast talking
to convince me of the validity of
that equation — one drawn direct-
ly fi'om his ’own fallacious in-
ferences !

General comments : please,
more Schmitz! I’m not at all
fussy. I like him in any shape or
form and Wellan Dasinger isn’t
a bad fit. I would also like to
commend artist Lloyd Birming-
ham on his March cover. I won-
der what he’d look like on the
inside? (Ed.: you’ll see in July.)

I’m afraid that Anderson’s
February story wasn’t up to his
usual level, but it did have some
interesting things to say about
men — and politicians.

“Mindfield” was light-years
beyond Herbert’s October con-
tribution, both in scope and ex-
ecution. I really enjoyed that one
all the way.

Ken Winkes
Arlington, Wash.

• Couldn’t agree more. Be-
sides, ive’d rather “sink” to
blood -and-thunder, if necessary,
than to thud-and-blunder. FYI,
more Schmitz stories scheduled
in future issues.

Dear Editor:

The guest editorial by Bob
Bloch came as a surprise to me.
For the past year or so I have
been writing and asking why he
has been absent from your pages
for so long — and either the letter
wasn’t printed or that part was
cut out, as it probably will be
from this letter, if it is printed.
As I have many times said, Bob
Bloch is a great writer in sf as

142

AMAZING STORIES

well as in horrors, and I’m still
hoping to see a story from him in
either your pages or in FAN-
TASTIC’S.

The rest of the stories in your
March issue were all good, but
the best was “Mindfield!” by
Frank Herbert. The thing I like
about his stories, besides the
fact that they are well-written,
is that his ideas are original.
But then, all the stories in that
issue seemed to have a new con-
cept to add to the field-

Bob Adolfsen
9 Prospect Ave.
Sea Cliff, N.Y.

• Bloch is in great demand in
Hollywood as a top-price script
writer — which is why he ivould
like to — hut can’t — 'write more
for us.

Dear Editor:

please ! ! It’s bad enough that
one magazine publishes Ferdi-
nand Feghoot! Please tell me
that Benedict Breadfruit was
just a filler for the March issue
only! The space wasted by it
could be put to better use, I’m
sure. For instance, an An Lab
similar to the one published by
ASF, I am a fairly new convert
to sf, and I would like to see a
small Fanzine review, reviewing
one fanzine a month. You could
put it at the end of The Spectro-
scope.

On the whole, I like shorter

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. . . OR SO YOU SAY

143

stories better than longer ones,
but if you keep on publishing se-
rials on par with the ones you
have been publishing lately, like
“Second Ending,” “Pawn of the
Black Feet,” and “The Man Who
Had No Brains,” I am all for se-
rials. Keep ’em cornin’!

As to the rest of the contents
of the March ish, I could not
wade thru the first five pages of
“Mindfield !,” but the rest of the
stories were extremely well writ-
ten.

I agree whole-heartedly with
Bob Bloch’s editorial. There is
much top-grade science fiction
available today, which would not
be too hard on the producer’s
budget, such as Murray Lein-
ster’s “Med” series.

Gary Pokrassa,

Franklin Square
New York

• Sorry. Love ns, love our
Breadfruit. That’s the way it
goes around here.

COMING NEXT MONTH

Keith Laumer returns in the July issue of AMAZING with the
intensely exciting beginning of a provocative new novel, A
Trace of Memory.

Laumer's story ranges
through time and space as an
alien and an earthman battle
for the secret of their minds.

The July AMAZING will also
feature The Chamber of Life,
a Classic Reprint, by G. Pey-
ton Wertenbaker; the second
instalment of Ben Bova's ex-
citing extrapolations about
extra-terrestrial life; and sev-
eral other short stories and
special features, plus all our
regular departments.

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144

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